Film Review - Strange World (2022)

 Strange World is the newest Disney Animation film and stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Searcher Clade, the son of a famous explorer (Dennis Quaid) who went missing 25 years ago but when his farm which harnesses a plant that is the power supply of his home Pando is under threat due to an infection of the crops he must venture down to the source of the roots and solve the problem so he can save his farm and home.

 

Strange World was a movie that I had high hopes for, I love Disney Animation (it was my first real gateway drug into loving movies as a whole) and the first trailer for this movie was fantastic promising this wonderous adventure to a strange new world, to boldy go where few had gone before, hopefully this would soar unlike Pixar’s Lightyear which was a debacle.

 

Well it is better than Lightyear but not by much I’m sorry to say and the main reason for that is so much of this movie is dull and flat to watch, there is no real wonder or sense of awe or moments where you want to go “WOW That is something” like Top Gun Maverick did or the previews for Avatar: The Way of Water do where you sit there in your cinema seat and are astounded at what your watching.

 

And part of that firstly is the animation, it’s the same dull, dreary lifelike look that Pixar has done for some of their recent films and it looks terrible, the people look like blobs, the colours feel muted and drab and there aren’t those moments where the movie pulls back to let you see this whole new world, a new fantastic point of view, taking you wonder by wonder on this mission and that this is not here really hurts this movie.

 

What also hurts it is the characters, again their dull, dreary and feel very predictable to watch in terms of here’s where they are and here’s where they will end up, Gyllenhaal is solid as always but he feels partially out of place as the lead of this type of movie while Dennis Quaid is good fun as his explorer father even if he can’t quite save this movie.

 

And I miss the grand old days of Disney Animation, the beautiful drawing styles, the noble heroes, the grand villains (Disney has a rogues gallery that any studio would kill to have), the music that becomes part of your world and that sense of here is what animation can do as a medium that the real world can’t capture and I sorely sorely wish that Jennifer Lee as the head of Disney Animation had balanced the family dramas with that tradition of Disney Animation and if this movie’s failure a the box office sees her go in that role I won’t be sad if it happens.

 

And so that was Strange World and it’s a bit of a disappointment for me sad to say, I had high hopes and they weren’t met and I hope that Disney Animation can return to greatness soon, 1 and a half out of 5.