I really hope there’s a 3D version of Strange World, because it’s the kind of trippy, vibrant animation that delights the senses when stereoscopically experienced. We’re so used to the subdued color palette of the green-screen quilts that are modern live-action blockbusters that when something comes along that understands the beauty of usefulness of color and isn’t afraid to use it, you feel overwhelmed in the best possible way. Strange World has the same imaginative potential as the big 128-Crayon box did back in elementary school. Writer-co-director Qui Nguyen draws from decades of speculative adventure fiction and crafts a neat little family drama right in the middle of it, equal parts Jules Verne and Michael Crichton.
The Clade family has been synonymous with exploration and adventure for decades throughout the land of Avalonia. Patriarch Jaeger (Dennis Quaid, with a flamethrower) is a man of the wilderness, while his son Searcher (Jake Gyllenhaal, bringing all sorts of complicated dad vibes to his own characterization) has embraced the farming life. This leaves Ethan (Jaboukie Young-White, who is now a voice actor in a Disney movie and that’s simply staggering), the third generation of Clade weirdos, trying to figure out his own path. He likes card games and new frontiers, and he’s also a rules lawyer who has a capacity for adapting to and understanding new situations better than either of the previous generations of Clades, which is helpful as they all undertake a semi-mutable mission that’s going to keep everyone’s ideology and motivation nimble; there’s a lot going on in and around Avalonia.
There was some controversy about this film on the internet, focused on the fact that Ethan Clade is a gay teen who has a crush on another gay teen. This isn’t a film about trying to turn anyone gay or bludgeon anyone over the head with any message other than believing in oneself and trusting instincts. Rather, this is a story that holds that gay teens exist, and this fact is addressed with the exact kind of witty mortification that any teen would feel when their parents try and talk them up to their crush. What so much of the disingenuous bleating that we keep hearing from these very angry people is concerned with seems to be anything that goes against their absolute control over their children’s destinies — politically, religiously, ideologically, careers, methodology. People seem to be terrified that their kids aren’t going to accept everything they’re told as the gospel truth and simply carry on as Their Parents 2.0.
Strange World isn’t like Frozen 2, which seemed made to troll the people who get angry at Disney online like it was an unpaid internship. This is a family adventure film that has magenta pterodactyls and big marshmallow octopus, as well as a blue shapeless thing named Splat that’s going to win your heart over. The Clade family also has a three-legged dog named Legend, and that’s the kind of specific touch that resonates. And they’re an interracial family where women can fix machines and men can work the fields, so there’s all sorts of little landmines for reactionaries to get caught up in because of their own resistance to evolution. But as a clue to the kind of storytelling that Strange World is embracing (and excelling at): In horror movies of the ’70s and ’80s, it would always be in English class where whatever the teacher had to say was going to be the thematic pathway of the rest of the film. Here, it’s a resource allotment tabletop RPG, but it works just as well and provides the same kind of spike in endorphins when you realize the filmmakers know exactly what they’re doing.
