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The fundamental components of Disney’s most recent science fiction/fantasy film, “Strange World,” are all well known. Three generations of insecure males, a family of adventurers, an urgent quest to stop a strange ecological calamity, an absent father, and a number of underwritten female supporting characters with placeholder personalities ranging from strong to loving are all present. It’s “Avatar” crossed with “Fantastic Voyage,” and owing to Disney’s countless skilled animators, it also looks fantastic on a huge screen. With their assistance, “Strange World” successfully navigates a checklist of formulaic plot points and pre-packaged emotional insights.
Co-directors Don Hall and Qui Nguyen’s most recent project is “Strange World.” They previously collaborated on “Raya and the Last Dragon” with Paul Briggs and Carlos López Estrada, who are also co-directors of Hall. It’s challenging to give credit for collaborations of this size and scope, but Nguyen’s solo writing credit and co-directing credit on “Strange World” stand out (this is his debut feature). Hall isn’t a slouch either; his name appears prominently on recent Disney hits including “Moana,” “Big Hero 6,” and “Winnie the Pooh.”
“Strange World” feels like a lower-stakes, and consequently more at ease, pairing of Hall and Nguyen’s abilities after “Raya and the Last Dragon.” These people have undoubtedly watched and possibly even studied the Disney animation produced during the company’s revival in the 1990s. Have you seen “Big Hero 6?” sincerly. It’s encouraging to see that they have discovered a project with “Strange World” that makes the most of their individual skills combined rather than simply feeling like it was focus-grouped to death.
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Despite lacking dramatic intensity, “Strange World” moves along at a leisurely pace that makes up for it. Dennis Quaid’s obstinate explorer Jaeger Clade abandons his insecure son, Searcher Clade (Jake Gyllenhaal). For once, Searcher wants his father to follow his example and pay attention to a strange green plant he calls Pando. Jaeger, however, ignores both Searcher and Pando. In the space of one intertitle, 25 years have passed since Searcher left his fellow explorers to explore Avalonia, the remote mountain valley home of the Clades. Since adopting Pando as the community’s primary power source throughout that time, Searcher has emerged as Avalonia’s hero. Now that he is a Pando farmer, Searcher is mostly concerned with his crops and his family, which includes his devoted aviator wife Meridian (Gabrielle Union), his often humiliated adolescent son Ethan (Jaboukie Young-White), and Legend, their three-legged dog.
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Callisto (Lucy Liu), one of Jaeger’s former explorer friends, requests a reluctant Searcher to assist her in finding out why the Pando crops are not producing the electrical charge that they once did. And he does so while towing his wife and son. Together, they enter a large hole in the ground where they find a vivid, Pandora-like planet populated with numerous sentient animals and plants that resemble the images from an old biology textbook. Jaeger, who now resides among the amoeba forests and acid rivers, is also swiftly discovered by them. While Searcher runs after Ethan, who’s usually a few steps ahead, he and Searcher play catch up.
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The Clade guys do not get along with one another, as might be expected, and they do not function well as a team. Although they cautiously approach a few of the clichéd power dynamics along the road, such as when Jaeger asks Ethan about his love life and, mercifully, doesn’t bat an eye when he learns that Ethan likes a boy named Diazo, their writers wisely sidestep many of them. The parents of Searcher already understand and embrace their child for who they are, and their warm worries always err on the side of overt sentimentality. Their conversation seems to have been revised and polished without also being reduced to dry talking points.
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The animation and overall direction of “Strange World,” which jumps from one action and chase sequence to the next, are similarly choppy. Among the talented voice actors, Quaid and Gyllenhaal stand out, but the animators make what could have been a paint-by-numbers genre exercise look impressive enough to marvel at. With flocks of magenta pterodactyls, pastel coral forests, and vast expanses of multicolored tentacle grass, they commit to a style of richly drawn paperback novel/matte painting surrealism.
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There is something to be said for a family-friendly cartoon whose principal attraction is not its authors’ original ideas, but rather their team’s careful implementation of ostensibly cliched concepts. With Disney’s most recent animated films, it doesn’t appear to occur frequently enough, which contributes to the impression that “Strange World” is a rare example of execution outperforming creativity. Much worse things may happen.
Just today, November 23, in theaters.
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