Interesting. A bit of a self-fulfilment by Disney here, in my opinion. "Strange World" has flopped quite badly at the box office, mostly I suspect due to a lack of promotion - the film was in the cinema before I'd even heard of it. You have to wonder though if that lack of promotion was because the company lost faith with a movie that struggles to shake off the idea that it's all a bit second rate.
Searcher Clade (Jake Gyllenhaal), son of the legendary explorer Jaeger Clade (Dennis Quaid) returns from an aborted expedition without his father, who continues on alone, but with a mysterious plant that can generate electricity. Decades later, with Searcher now a husband and father, he's tasked with another expedition, to work out why his miracle discovery is started to die. His new mission, undertaken with some of his father's old crew, follows the plants to their root and discover an undiscovered land, with odd creatures.
So, there are some positives to it. The vocal performances are good. The visuals are, to a point good. The creatures I found to be a bit bland, but there is an explanation within the story as to why they look the way they do. There are a few funny moments along the way. The environmental aspect of the story is worthy and some of that came as a pleasant surprise.
But it has to be said that the rest of the plot is pretty underwhelming. It's a pedestrian adventure once we're underground and, though there are a couple of surprises that you will certainly see coming, there's not really an action scene to really get the heart racing.
I've had a patchy time with Disney's own animated releases over the past few years, with "Encanto" being much better than "Raya and the Last Dragon" and with "Strange World" closer to the latter than the former. I'm more forgiving of this than I might be, as we watched it on Disney Plus and my son enjoyed it, than I would be had I been to the cinema.
