Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Strange World’ on Disney+, an Animated Saga With Grand Visuals, Preachy Themes and Forgettable Characters

This year’s Disney+ late-notice Christmas gift to subscribers is Strange World, an animated adventure that tanked at the box office, earning about $62 million globally, which is some pretty rough ROI for Mickey Mouse. Some point to Disney’s lackluster marketing campaign, which seems viable, because it didn’t penetrate our lives like the studio’s usual family fodder – there were no Strange World logos or characters adorning banana stickers or plastic-wrap boxes in our conscious or unconscious worlds. Another reason for its lack of popular success? It prominently features a queer character, which limited its release to non-backward countries. None of this accounts for whether it was actually good and/or watchable, of course, which is precisely why we’re here right now, determining if it’ll make for quality viewing during Xmas break.

STRANGE WORLD: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: It begins with some old-timey newsreel pastiche and vintage comic-book aesthetics, setting the tone for a rarity: a Movie Without Cell Phones. Not that it takes place on Earth, mind you – it’s sort of an alt-Earth, similar to our own, but confined to a setting, a land called Avalonia, hemmed in by “endless” mountains. Avalonia’s grand hero is Jaeger Clade (Dennis Quaid), who quests to see what’s on the other side of those mountains with his son, Searcher (Jake Gyllenhaal), alongside him. Alongside, until Searcher discovers an electrified plant, and their destinies diverge. Jaeger treks on. Searcher returns to “urban” Avalonia, and becomes just as famous as his dad by farming the plant, dubbed Pando, for energy to fuel homes and flying machines that apparently can’t fly high enough to get over the mountains.

Twenty-five years go by. Jaeger’s been AWOL the entire time, and Searcher has abandonment issues, but hey, at least he helped shape Avalonia into its current utopian state. And he also has a family of his own: His wife Meridian (Gabrielle Union) crop-dusts their Pando fields. Their teenage son Ethan (Jaboukie Young-White) is happy but awkward because he’s nursing a crush on a boy. And their three-legged dog, Legend, big-licks everything that moves. It’s worth noting that Ethan is out although nobody here says “gay,” and we also can logically deduce that Avalonia is a utopia at least partially because Ron DeSantis doesn’t appear to live there. Alas, this perfectly harmonious existence begins to crumble when Pando crops become infected with a virus, prompting President Callisto (Lucy Liu) to recruit Searcher for a mission: Go underground to the massive Pando root system and find out what the h-e-double-hockey-sticks is going on down there. So off they go, but not before Ethan says he wants to go but his dad puts his foot down and says it’s too dangerous.

This is a key pivot point in the story, where it could become disappointingly predictable or narratively bold. It fulfills the former by having Ethan stow away on Callisto’s ship, and reuniting Searcher with his long-estranged father; these are not spoilers, because they occur in the first act, and we saw them coming from miles out, and anyway, one doesn’t cast Dennis Quaid for only a few minutes of screen time. But it also fulfills the latter by showing us the thing in the movie title: A vibrant and colorful inner-Earth world populated by the likes of giant walking globular things, tentacled Cthulhu-squids, neon batlike whatevers and an anthropomorphic blue blob that Ethan nicknames Splat. Action sequences and on-the-nose climate-change metaphors await!

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Strange World unites the Journey to the Center of the Earth conceit with any number of one-and-done non-musical Disney franchise hopefuls, e.g., Bolt, Chicken Little and Meet the Robinsons.

Performance Worth Watching: What we have here is a celeb voice cast doing capable, but forgettable work. So let’s use this space to give big kudos to the animators and character/creature designers, who do all the heavy lifting here by giving us scads of grand, imaginative eye candy.

Memorable Dialogue: Jaeger has a thing for declarative dialogue:

Jaeger: The Burning Sea – the only obstacle standing between Jaeger Clade and his destiny!”

Meridian: Can you go be dramatic somewhere else?

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Can Strange World’s visual splendor overcome its shortcomings in plot and character? Yes it can, especially if you’re not shelling out somewhere in the neighborhood of a c-note to take the family out for the big-screen, bigger-concession-prices experience. Such is the irony: Lovely animation best appreciated on a towering screen, but accompanied by a story that doesn’t quite deserve such focused attention.

Although several names behind Disney’s perfectly lovely Raya and the Last Dragon earn credit for Strange World (director Don Hall, co-director and writer Qui Nguyen), it lacks the depth of its predecessor. Thematically, it dishes out concepts about environmental harmony and generational conflict, both of which feel obvious, calculated and pushy. But it also affirms that upsetting the status quo for the greater good is sometimes necessary – not that the OIL COMPANIES are LISTENING, mind you. That’s an admirable assertion to make, and a valuable lesson for young ears. But then we get a scene in which the entirety of everything is urgently at stake, and characters pause to exchange sentiments about accepting each other for who they are instead of trying to make them be someone else, and all we can do is sigh: Save the world! You can hug later, dummies!

Every positive attribute here (diverse representation) seems balanced by an underwhelming one (diverse characters with empty personalities and nothing interesting to say), which kind of balances Strange World out to zero. That’s not a great place to be, but at the very least, it’s easy to appreciate its eminent consumability and lush, inviting visuals.

Our Call: Low-to-modest expectations will do wonders for Strange World. STREAM IT, but go in knowing you’re not going to be knocked out.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.