Director: Don Hall, Qui Nguyen
Starring: Voices of Jake Gyllenhaal, Denis Quaid, Jaboukie Young-White, Gabrielle Union, Lucy Liu
Distributor: Disney
Runtime: 102 mins. Reviewed in Nov 2022
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc

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Rating notes: Mild science fiction themes

A Disney adventure tale about an expedition into the interior of a planet to seek the source of its energy and helping it to function again. It is also the story of fathers and sons and their relationships.

A Journey to the Centre of the Earth or a voyage 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in the Jules Verne vein? Not exactly. But, if Disney does an animated feature with some of these core elements, it is here in this Strange World.

This is a colourful Disney film, with a great deal of action. We are in a strange world on a strange planet where the community seems to be prospering, especially with a special vegetable that is electrically charged and supports the life of the town. However, it is beginning to wilt, and there is a need to discover why.

This leads to an expedition to the heart of the land to restore the ailing vegetable. (Jules Verne may well approve of this variation on his themes!)

We are introduced to a father and son team, Jaeger Clade (Quaid) is a big, bullish, moustachioed, explorer demanding his more fragile son Searcher (Gyllenhaal) accompany him across the forbidding mountain peaks. Searcher refuses, asserts himself and goes home. But it is Searcher who discovers the electric vegetables, building up the farms, harnessing the energy, the community prospering. Searcher now has a teenage son, Ethan (Young-White) and a strong and resourceful (crop dusting pilot) wife (Union).

The screenplay is geared towards a younger audience. Children who enjoy colourful action, at times non-stop, in an exotic location in the seas below their community, full of strange and shape-changing creatures might become intrigued. This is a quest film to heal the energy source of the vegetable.

But there are quite some twists in the plot – the sudden appearance of Jaeger after many years and the awkwardness between father and son. Then there is the repeat of the father-son scenario when Ethan wants to assert himself against Searcher.

At times the action stops and some heart-to heart conversations between the various fathers and sons take place – quite a strong theme for the younger audiences.

One of the difficulties with a number of animation films is that, at times, there is a lot of dialogue, using vocabulary that younger children may not be familiar with, and spoken more quickly than needs to be. With Strange World, the talk and action move at a more acceptable pace for a young audience, their being able to grasp the characters, what is going on and why. To that extent, it is, perhaps, more accessible to the younger audiences (and, again perhaps, something of a trial or endurance for older audiences to sit through).

[Some American audiences have expressed criticism that the screenwriters have made the young Ethan a gay teenager, a touch flirty with his friend. It would seem that younger audiences would not pick up on it.]