Hidden World

In a couple of recent conversations about movies with friends, when I've mentioned that I saw Strange World, I've gotten blank stares. Not a lack of recognition for the admittedly generic title, but a lack of awareness of the movie's existence.

If you're also in that camp: Strange World is the latest film from Walt Disney animation. (Not Pixar.) It's set in an isolated valley where a sickness in the plants threatens society. The farmer Searcher Clade agrees to a subterranean expedition to seek the origin of the sickness, even though he's turned against the life of an explorer, as personified by the father who abandoned him as a child. And that's not the only family connection here, as Searcher's wife and son, Meridian and Ethan, end up along on the journey.

Disney movies have been on quite a roll for the last decade or so... and I'm sorry to say that this one isn't nearly as good as I've come to expect from them of late. But what it is is the most proudly progressive film I could possibly imagine a massive corporation like Disney putting its name to.

Strange World is, very overtly, a movie about climate change and environmentalism. It features diversity both in the casting of the voice actors and the appearance of the characters. The family at the core is interracial. It includes commentary about toxic forms of performative masculinity. And one of the characters is openly gay; we're not talking "oblique hint that we can still cut from the movie in other markets" gay, but actually expressing healthy same-sex affection and being supported without question by every other character in the movie.

But, after allowing their creative team to make a movie like this, Disney seems to have lacked the courage of their convictions to then actually market the finished product. It arrived in theaters to very little fanfare in November 2022, and was up on Disney+ barely a month later -- again, with very little fanfare. It seems that after the company's frankly very late and very tepid response to authoritarianism in Florida still kicked up an outsized culture war shit storm in response, Disney apparently chose silence this time. Maybe the right audience for Strange World will find it, maybe it won't; but at least the right-wing pitchforks won't be coming for them again.

I wish I could muster up more than just mild disappointment for that, but the movie isn't so great that I want to ride that enthusiastically to its defense. It's decent, but its reach exceeds its grasp; there are lot of lofty ideas in the mix here and they aren't all woven in gracefully. It lacks the emotion of Encanto, doesn't have the pure message of Frozen, isn't as clever as Zootopia... though maybe it's unfair to expect every Disney animated feature to keep rising to those standards.

It does look as great as those movies; better, even. The visuals of Strange World are wild, colorful, lush, and detailed. The setting is a great use of animation; you don't need talking animals or magic when the setting itself allows the artists to indulge their creativity. The cast is solid, including Jake Gyllenhaal, Jaboukie Young-White, Gabrielle Union, Dennis Quaid, and Lucy Liu.

I suppose I'd put Strange World right on the cusp of a recommendation, rating it a B-. But I wish I felt like it would be more memorable in the long run for all the barriers it's (quietly) breaking.