Strange World

Story: In a faraway land of Avalonia, people struggle to make ends meet until the Clades family makes a discovery. During an expedition, the son finds a rare plant called Pando that acts as an energy source. Years later, they realise there’s more to Pando than meets the eye.

Review: Parents imposing their dreams on their children and kids rebelling against this norm until they become parents themselves — an evolving father-son equation and environmental conservation lie at the heart of Disney’s new animated adventure. Father Jaeger Clade (Dennis Quaid) takes pride in being an explorer and hopes his son Searcher (Jake Gyllenhaal) takes after him in his love for the mountains. They hope to go beyond Avalonia’s mountains and enhance its resources. However, the son is drawn to farming and his unwillingness to follow the exploration path separates the two. They accidentally reunite 25 years later only to discover how similar they are.

Despite some good actors voicing the characters, this is perhaps one of the most forgettable animation films from the studio. It’s not bad, it’s boring and sometimes that’s worse. There’s nothing exciting about the world it creates underground. You watch the vast land of living forests, burning seas, jelly-like slimy creatures, walking cliffs all with a sense of indifference. The visuals fail to engage or transport you to a make-believe world. Both the theme and execution feel dated and monotonous. The story does not establish an emotional or a visual connect. While the exploration part of it doesn’t thrill you, the father-son issues don’t have an impact either.

Despite its fairly short duration (less than two hours), you feel like you’d spent a lifetime watching it. Given Disney’s expertise and dominance in this feel-good world of animation, Strange World is strangely mediocre. Jake Gyllenhaal voices the character of ‘Searcher’ who weirdly looks like John Krasinski and that’s the most interesting discovery you’ll make here in an otherwise predictable tale.