Director: Don Hall, Qui Nguyen
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Jaboukie Young-White, Dennis Quaid
Year: 2022
Fantastic Voyage meets Onward, Disney’s newest, Strange World, is a mix of mostly what we’ve seen before and always what we’ve already experienced. It’s Journey to the Center of the Earth and Atlantis, it’s a million stories we’ve already been told, it’s throwback to the storylines before Lin Manuel Miranda took over; in essence, it’s nothing new. But, that doesn’t make it crap, it just makes it recycled, and sometimes that’s OK, as long as we liked it the first time and we keep our expectations low. That’s maybe the largest reason this film feels fine; we went in expecting much, much worse.
In a small town buried within a valley surrounded by an impassable mountain range, the townsfolk learn to be happy where they are, because they don’t really have much of a choice. But not Jaeger Clade, the burly explorer, he’s everyone’s hero because he’s determined to someday get out, to see what’s beyond the walls that have always kept him penned in. After he disappears, his son Searcher takes a different route, becoming a farmer and teaching his own son that you don’t need anything past your home’s fences. But when their magical crop starts to fail, the truth might lie far way, forcing this fearful folk to turn adventurous.
We really did go backward, back to a time of the typical, carbon copy Disney character; male, skinny, big nose, curly hair, scared. That’s like two dozen of the same character, and he’s back, after they attempted to break free with ethnic girls and new story arcs. Disney seems confused, especially constantly popping out remakes at the same time, and Strange World is just another symptom of that problem. Still, it’s far better than the flop that it has become, since it’s really just some good pieces thrown together; a little fun, a little morality, a little adventure, nothing big, but nothing awful. I liked where the tale took us, the characters were a bit annoying though, and you shouldn’t expect greatness from a movie that had such a low ceiling.
My rating: ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆