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Strange World, 2022
In the land of Avalonia, Searcher (Jake Gyllenhaal) and his father, Jaeger (Dennis Quaid) are on an expedition to learn what is beyond the daunting mountains that surround their land. Jaeger becomes separated from the party, while Searcher returns with a plant he’s discovered that generates electricity. Years later, Searcher is a father to his own teenage son, Ethan (Jabouki Young-White). When the plants that fuels their civilization begin dying, Searcher, his wife Meridian (Gabrielle Union), and Ethan join an expedition to discover what is killing the plants, finding themselves in a strange world full of unusual creatures.
While too much of the action falls into middling contemporary visual tropes, engaging characters and a great late-film plot turn make this a fun watch.
It’s a shame that this film is being ratings-bombed on IMDb--the homophobes really turned out for this one, LOL--because I thought that this was a fun, visually engaging family adventure with a really thought-provoking final act.
As a teacher, this film was on my radar a bit more because of the Florida educator who got in big trouble for showing this to a class. The fury was aimed at the fact that the character of Ethan is gay. And you know what? I actually think that this is exactly how queer characters should be included in family films. Much like in The Mitchells vs the Machines, the teenage character being gay is almost an aside, and certainly not his defining characteristic. Ethan shares the screen with his crush for maybe 70 seconds? But in this film, Ethan being gay is a non-issue, and it’s honestly really nice. There are no fraught conversations here with his parents, and he gets embarrassing ribbing from other characters just as he would if his crush were a girl. It’s frankly aspirational, and the borderline mundanity of the character’s sexuality makes the shrill response to it look all the more absurd.
I was also very into the film’s world and the creatures that populated it. It’s the rare modern Disney film that I could actually see myself rewatching because many of the details of the ecosystem take on a completely different light with information that we learn in the last act. The film naturally can’t resist giving us an adorable critter sidekick---here a blue blob named Splat that Ethan befriends--but the rest of the animals are really interesting. I think that what I liked about them was just how wild they were---neither overtly villanous nor twee and adorable. They are simply animals, albeit alien in their shapes and some of their behaviors.
Finally, I really enjoyed the plot about the complexity of relationships between the generations. Searcher knows what it’s like to grow up with a parent who wanted him to be a different person with different interests, and yet he ultimately cannot help but do the same thing to Ethan. It’s bound up in his ambiguous feelings about his own father, and when he sees signs of Ethan behaving too much like Jaeger, he feels the need to intervene. I thought that Ethan was an interesting character, and one whose empathy made him very likable. From the beginning, he sees the strange world differently from the other people on the mission, and it’s his keen sense of observation and lack of rushing to judgment that enables him to make a critical deduction in the climax of the film.
The only downside of the film for me--and it’s a moderate complaint--was how overly familiar a lot of the action looked. It’s this modern Marvel-derived way of showing action sequences that I’m completely numb and indifferent to at this point. It’s one of my biggest complaints in general with any action-oriented fare these days. I’ll be engaged by the characters and the premise, and then some overly long and overly familiar action sequence totally kills the vibe. At least this film has better stakes in terms of those sequences, but it was still too large a proportion of the runtime for my liking.
Surprisingly good.
Strange World, 2022
In the land of Avalonia, Searcher (Jake Gyllenhaal) and his father, Jaeger (Dennis Quaid) are on an expedition to learn what is beyond the daunting mountains that surround their land. Jaeger becomes separated from the party, while Searcher returns with a plant he’s discovered that generates electricity. Years later, Searcher is a father to his own teenage son, Ethan (Jabouki Young-White). When the plants that fuels their civilization begin dying, Searcher, his wife Meridian (Gabrielle Union), and Ethan join an expedition to discover what is killing the plants, finding themselves in a strange world full of unusual creatures.
While too much of the action falls into middling contemporary visual tropes, engaging characters and a great late-film plot turn make this a fun watch.
It’s a shame that this film is being ratings-bombed on IMDb--the homophobes really turned out for this one, LOL--because I thought that this was a fun, visually engaging family adventure with a really thought-provoking final act.
As a teacher, this film was on my radar a bit more because of the Florida educator who got in big trouble for showing this to a class. The fury was aimed at the fact that the character of Ethan is gay. And you know what? I actually think that this is exactly how queer characters should be included in family films. Much like in The Mitchells vs the Machines, the teenage character being gay is almost an aside, and certainly not his defining characteristic. Ethan shares the screen with his crush for maybe 70 seconds? But in this film, Ethan being gay is a non-issue, and it’s honestly really nice. There are no fraught conversations here with his parents, and he gets embarrassing ribbing from other characters just as he would if his crush were a girl. It’s frankly aspirational, and the borderline mundanity of the character’s sexuality makes the shrill response to it look all the more absurd.
I was also very into the film’s world and the creatures that populated it. It’s the rare modern Disney film that I could actually see myself rewatching because many of the details of the ecosystem take on a completely different light with information that we learn in the last act. The film naturally can’t resist giving us an adorable critter sidekick---here a blue blob named Splat that Ethan befriends--but the rest of the animals are really interesting. I think that what I liked about them was just how wild they were---neither overtly villanous nor twee and adorable. They are simply animals, albeit alien in their shapes and some of their behaviors.
Finally, I really enjoyed the plot about the complexity of relationships between the generations. Searcher knows what it’s like to grow up with a parent who wanted him to be a different person with different interests, and yet he ultimately cannot help but do the same thing to Ethan. It’s bound up in his ambiguous feelings about his own father, and when he sees signs of Ethan behaving too much like Jaeger, he feels the need to intervene. I thought that Ethan was an interesting character, and one whose empathy made him very likable. From the beginning, he sees the strange world differently from the other people on the mission, and it’s his keen sense of observation and lack of rushing to judgment that enables him to make a critical deduction in the climax of the film.
The only downside of the film for me--and it’s a moderate complaint--was how overly familiar a lot of the action looked. It’s this modern Marvel-derived way of showing action sequences that I’m completely numb and indifferent to at this point. It’s one of my biggest complaints in general with any action-oriented fare these days. I’ll be engaged by the characters and the premise, and then some overly long and overly familiar action sequence totally kills the vibe. At least this film has better stakes in terms of those sequences, but it was still too large a proportion of the runtime for my liking.
Surprisingly good.