Just finished watching it with my partner. We both enjoyed it and would rank it above
Raya and the Last Dragon and
Home on the Range. It is, in my view, much more engaging than
Lightyear and leagues better than the dreadful
Chicken Little. The hate it's received is undeserved and seems to me to have very little to do with the quality of the film itself.
A few disjointed thoughts:
The story is nicely fleshed out and at times quite exciting. The environmental message hit home without being preachy or heavy-handed. The only real weak spot for us was the very end: we couldn't tell what they had switched to (I'm keeping my description vague so as to avoid spoilers) and had to look it up. Even when rewatched in light of this information, the final scenes did not seem especially clear to us.
The flora and fauna of the eponymous strange world are really something to behold! It was a feast for the eyes.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that Ethan's crush on Diazo was much less subtly dealt with than I'd been led to believe.
@Vegas Disney Fan, for example, described it as "so minor it barely existed", but it comes up at about four separate moments ranging from the beginning to the end of the film, and I would say that most attentive viewers (including children) would understand what's going on. While it doesn't drive the plot in any way, nor is it (as some have suggested) just a gratuitous nod to inclusion. To my mind, it ties in very well with the theme of fatherly acceptance that runs throughout the film, because even though homophobia appears to be absent from the world of
Strange World, its continuing existence in ours adds an extra layer of meaning to Searcher and Jaeger's total ease with Ethan's homosexuality. It was heartening to watch as a forty-year-old gay man and would have been truly uplifting to see as a gay boy. (Not that I want to reopen the "Midwestern Moms" can of worms, but I should make clear that I still don't think that the film's poor performance had anything to do with its handling of "gay themes", which, though more prominent than I'd expected, remain a rather minor thread of the movie.)
The claim advanced in this thread that the father, Searcher Clade, was made to look like a "bumbling idiot" has zero basis in fact. On the contrary, his character emerges as an intelligent, strong, and self-sacrificial hero who is swiftly able to get over his own hang-ups and do right by his son and the world at large. He plays a pivotal role in saving the day. Those concerned about such things can, in other words, rest assured that the straight white dad is not thrown under the bus by this film. Even the grandfather, Jaeger Clade, comes good in the end, despite his very many flaws.
People have commented (negatively) on the character designs, but I liked the cartoony aesthetic. The only complaint I have concerns Ethan, whose appearance to me reads more like that of an adult woman than a teenage boy. I wish they'd based his looks more closely on Jaboukie's cheeky and boyish face.
Legend the dog and Splat the, well, splat are adorable! My partner and I were smiling whenever we saw them.
All in all, we liked
Strange World quite a bit and would happily rewatch it. This thread does the film (and the individuals whose efforts went into its creation) a great disservice. I would urge those bent on railing against it to watch it before they continue commenting.
