Strange World (2022)

[Eric S'ennui]

Discuss

[Webslinger]

Ugh, the bad faith discourse on this one is going to be awful, isn't it?

 

Before the review proper, I'll just say that everything with Ethan and his openly acknowledged crush on Diazo is really cute. It doesn't occupy much of the running time (though I'm sure it's the one thing a segment of its audience will hyper-fixate on), but the fact that it's acknowledged at all and treated as no different from a straight teenage crush feels like a big deal. (It's also nice that his entire personality is not just "being gay.") Representation matters, and I'm glad that it's more than just a throwaway line or a blink-and-you'll-miss-it background event. Gay kids exist, and it's long past time that they get, y'know, maybe a sliver of nonjudgmental representation in a big-budget film. Anyway, off my soapbox and onto my proper review...

 

Strange World, the latest entrant into Disney’s animated pantheon, is a diverting if perhaps underdeveloped adventure. While not as impactful nor as memorable as most of Disney’s more recent output, it has aesthetically pleasing visuals, plenty of cute side gags with the array of sentient creatures, and nice, heartwarming messages about the bonds of family. The narrative admittedly bites off a bit more world-building than it can chew and sometimes lets the character development take a backseat, but when it takes the time to focus on the dynamics of the intergenerational relationship between the three main male characters, it’s as funny and touching as one would expect from a Disney animated film. Sadly, much of the discussion surrounding this film will likely center on either its poor box office performance (something it seemed doomed to with how relatively little Disney advertised it) or the fact that teenage character Ethan is presented unambiguously as gay – or worse yet, bad faith arguments that the latter is the root cause of the former. However, while it doesn’t quite measure up to the heights that director Don Hall has reached with his other efforts for Disney, it’s a fun family film with more than enough material to keep older viewers entertained.

 

B

[filmlover]

Definitely "Minor Disney" but a pleasant enough diversion that's full of absolutely beautiful images that make it worth seeing in a movie theater, despite an undercooked and cliched screenplay that isn't anywhere nearly as strong as the positively diverse representation on display (anyone with a problem with that needs to sit the hell down). Solid voice performances (I must admit the Day After Tomorrow reunion we get between Jake Gyllenhaal and Dennis Quaid delights me to no end lmao), some good gags, and engaging set pieces that should allow for this one to find a following as a "forgotten" effort through Disney+ in the future. B

[Morieris]

On 11/24/2022 at 10:58 PM, filmlover said:

despite an undercooked and cliched screenplay that isn't anywhere nearly as strong as the positively diverse representation on display

 

That's my criticism in a nutshell. It looks and sounds beautiful, some of the voice acting is great (Quaid in particular).

 

If you would have told me that Disney Animation proper would give us the most simple movie of the year (Barring talking about League of Super Pets), I would have been surprised.

 

The family stuff had real potential and shines when it's a touch more serious about how selfish Jaegar was.

Edited December 23, 2022 by Morieris

[cookie]

The gay representation is great.

 

It's a shame, then, that rest of the movie is so weightless. The character arcs feel so rushed and haphazard, and the action/adventure stuff in-between only serves as a fleeting distraction at the best of times, like the movie is in a hurry to get itself over with. It's like the whole thing was written in a week.

 

The film even squanders its one interesting conceit (they're in a monster's belly) by making it a twist when it would've made for a better (and surely more marketable) film had this what the movie had been about from the start instead. But because they decided to hold it back, you're not engaged for the majority of the runtime because the world and the creature designs are so generic and uninteresting without that added context, and the sloppy character relationships aren't enough to cover for it.

 

I seriously don't know what's happening over at WDAS for them to keep churning out beautifully animated slopfests like this and the Wreck-it-Ralph and Frozen sequels (and even better films like Raya and Encanto have their issues). There doesn't seem to be any semblance of quality control going on at the script level anymore, and I'm worried that this is going to eventually tank the studio's reputation if it keeps producing more follies like this.

 

2.5/5