Rob Walter

I don’t know who this movie was made for. On the one hand, there are jokes & prolonged visuals on cute things that indicate it’s for kids, yet at least one or two characters perish along the way in a fairly dark manner. The concept, world building & creature design are all fairly innovative, but the dialogue is juvenile and pacing rushed. There were several moments in the movie I laughed simply at how bad the pacing was, it felt like watching a movie at 1.5 ties the speed. There are three general rules of story writing this movie breaks. If one character, for example, investigates a library & discovers a dark secret, the rest of the group they split away from should not know said secret yet. Yet as the story unfolds in Strange World, most, if not all characters are omniscient to the experiences of the other characters at one point or another. This leaves plot holes & inconsistencies throughout the film that will make anyone even remotely paying attention grab the remote to pause the movie & say “huh?” The second broken rule is that of character diversity. Don’t get me wrong, on the surface this is a wonderfully diverse cast of characters, which was great to see in a Disney Film & one of the reasons my roommate and I didn’t stop the movie early on; the son is gay, the family biracial, the dog has one leg, and even the most conservatively dogmatic mindset in this film doesn’t bat an eye at a relative’s gay crush. While all this was refreshing to see in a Disney film, it also made every single character’s personality a carbon copy of each other. There was diversity of ethnicity, race, & sexuality, but no real diversity of mindset, maturity, or opinion. And the private, vulnerable motivations of these characters are announced multiple times as nauseam throughout the movie. You’ll be beaten over the head with a bland pronouncement of one’s motivation stated as though it were the “fish of the day” so often, it will make most adults feel dumber. And the third rule of decent writing broken is, Show, don’t Tell. Another reason the audience will feel as though they’re being spoken down to is the number of time the movie has characters stating the patently obvious, multiple times. The dialogue is written almost as a radio play, but for third graders. I could’ve simply listened to the audio of this film & walked away not having missed a beat. But I would’ve missed out on the above average world & creature design, and orchestral music which was trying way, way too hard for a movie of this lackluster caliber. Overall I was entertained, if annoyed & disappointed by the lazy writing & hyperactive pacing. It wasn’t the story or characters that got us through to the end of the movie. It wasn’t finding out what happens, because anyone can guess every single beat of this film after the first five minutes, there were zero surprises in this film. It was the design, music, and curiosity that got us through this film. The curiosity as to whether our expectations were going to be subverted. Spoiler alert: they weren’t.