Strange World, the latest movie from Walt Disney Animation Studios, is, as its title suggests, a little bit strange. Arriving on the heels of Lightyear, another Disney project that faced a lukewarm response from critics and audiences, Strange World may be destined to face the same fate.
Coming from Don Hall and Qui Nguyen, the team behind 2021’s more well-received Raya and the Last Dragon, Strange World feels like one of Disney’s lesser efforts, destined to either be forgotten or held up as a cult classic by a subsection of Disney fans who are still singing the praises of Treasure Planet and Atlantis: the Lost Empire.
At the center of Strange World’s story is the Clade family. Patriarch Jaeger (voiced with gravely dad energy by Dennis Quaid) is a famous explorer from Avalonia, a fictional locale surrounded on all sides by supposedly unscalable mountains. Jaeger is often accompanied by his son Searcher (Jake Gyllenhaal), who is more interested in botany than adventure. The setup of a son and father who don’t quite see eye-to-eye doesn’t get a new twist here. Instead, Hall and Nguyen’s script settles for a typical story about how different generations can face the same problems.
From its opening moments, Strange World sets out to establish its inspirations, those being classic tales of adventure, such as those found in old Hollywood serials, comic books, books, and men’s adventure magazines. The movie even apes the hand-drawn art style of the latter for some of its expository scenes. It’s just too bad that these momentary flashes of stylistic inspiration don’t carry into the rest of the movie, which ends up feeling somewhat generic without it.
The look and limited numbers of environments and the creatures inhabiting them doesn’t quite live up to the movie’s title. Pixar’s Inside Out did a far better job at establishing different areas of its world and giving them all unique traits. Strange World mostly just differentiates its bright orange introductory area from the darker, more dangerous ones introduced later. Of all the movie’s weaknesses, its most glaring one is how decidedly uninspired it ends up feeling despite its best efforts.
On their final journey together, Searcher discovers a plant species that produces electricity. Given the somewhat confusing name Pando, the plant is cultivated in Avalonia over 25 years, giving the people there a source of power they never had before and giving Searcher his own claim to fame. Searcher is now a dad himself, married to crop-dusting pilot Meridian (Gabrielle Union) with a son named Ethan (voiced by Jaboukie Young-White).
Ethan is significant in that he is Disney’s first openly gay main character. To their credit, Nguyen and Hall don’t make the distinction subtle. Ethan’s crush on a boy in his friend group is established early on and referenced further throughout the film. It’s only a shame that Disney still can’t bring itself to put a gay relationship front and center, instead relegating it to the sidelines for the bulk of the movie.
The call to adventure comes when Callisto (Lucy Liu), an old friend of the family and current leader of Avalonia, tells Searcher that Pando seems to be dying, and that they must venture underground to find the source of the rot. Along with Ethan (who stows away) and Meridian, Searcher, Callisto, and the rest of the unestablished crew find themselves exploring the titular strange world, where they pick up Disney’s latest cute creature/merchandising opportunity, Splat (the merchandising angle is even lampshaded in the movie, a fun dig at Disney’s business model).
Strange World takes a decidedly less-is-more approach to establishing its plot, characters, and relationships. As a result, much of the movie feels rushed and disjointed. More often than not, the characters are presented with an obstacle that ends up being easily overcome so they can swiftly move on to the next thing. For a movie that features its setting as its main selling point, there’s a severe lack of setpieces that make use of the environment in surprising or interesting ways. There’s one Chekhov’s gun moment (in this case it’s more like Chekhov’s propeller) that is oddly highlighted but never paid off. Instead, Strange World places much of the story burden on the relationships between Jaeger, Searcher, and Ethan.
After the team discovers a much older Jaeger in the wilds, Searcher’s anxiety that Ethan will turn out to be like his grandfather heightens. This fear provides most of the conflict in the movie’s second half, but it’s never all that hard to see where that particular thread is leading, and the results don’t feel all that fresh or surprising. Strange World even seems to abandon this particular thread by its third act, which takes a decidedly different thematic approach to its story. This turn comes almost out of nowhere (with only one story element lightly hinting at it earlier in the story) and not only deviates from the movie’s throughline about family and legacy, but fails to connect with it in a meaningful way.
Strange World isn’t likely to stand out as one of Disney’s premiere projects. For all of its ambition in its messaging and inclusion, the movie ends up feeling like an afterthought more than anything. It’s unfortunate that a movie about different generations coming together that features an openly gay character can’t do more to say something profound, but Strange World reserves most of its energy for its decidedly straightforward adventure story. Even then, it can’t quite seem to stand out among the movies it most closely resembles. It doesn’t have the more grown-up vibes and palpable danger of Atlantis, nor does it have the unique touches or sense of scale of Treasure Planet. As it is, Strange World ends up feeling far too normal.
Strange World premieres in theaters on November 23rd.