Review | Strange World movie review: Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal voice father and son in Disney’s visually striking animated adventure
- Dennis Quaid voices a legendary explorer and Jake Gyllenhaal his unadventurous son in this visual feast that warns of plundering the world for natural resources
- But despite the monsters and mayhem they meet, the characters never feel like they’re in any danger, and the closing scenes lack any real emotional dynamism
3/5 stars
Giant tentacled monsters, shoals of pink flying fish, purple-coloured fauna – Disney’s latest animated adventure is a strange world indeed.
Loosely inspired by films such as the 1959 Jules Verne adaptation Journey to the Centre of the Earth, this family saga from Don Hall and Qui Nguyen is certainly arresting, with plenty of imaginative visuals to feast the eyes on.
The same can’t be said for the story, which starts brightly but doesn’t quite continue it through to the final act.
Strange World is set in a mysterious land called Avalonia, which is encircled by mountains that no one has ever passed. Explorer Jaeger Clade (voiced by Dennis Quaid) tries to do just this with a small expedition that includes his son Searcher (Jake Gyllenhaal). They discover pando – a revolutionary power-generating “wonder plant” – but then Jaeger disappears into the mist, never to return.
Twenty-five years on, Searcher (Jake Gyllenhaal) is now a farmer in Avalonia, with not an adventurous bone in his body. Yet there’s trouble in this utopian paradise: pando is dying. There is no choice but to find out why.
