Charlie Keller

Please ignore the bigotry of the loud but unrepresentative minority trying to tank the ratings for this good, entertaining, heartfelt movie. It's not only in sync with the times in most places, but also widely relevant and relatable, meaningful and touching. It's straightforwardly a good thing that this film is inclusive and fair to all people, including LGBTQ folks, as well as conscious and responsible about the planet we live on and need -- something we'd do well to cultivate a positive mindset on in an era of climate change. Children, of all people, have the most to gain from a strong environmental consciousness. This is something that can and should play a positive role even -- in fact, *especially* -- in content that's still very much fun, enjoyable entertainment. There's a large, if less vocal, majority that wants to have a heart and humanity on this kind of stuff. The prejudice driving this film's negative reviews is a problem on the part of those moviegoers alone, not this enjoyable, quality film. Strange World is entertaining and beautiful, meaningful and touching, and easy to connect with in its focus on universal human themes. They include struggling to live up to parental expectations. The clashing inter-generational values, rebellions, and conflicts of families. Finding a way forward amid the cross-generational love that shines through, binding our families and communities together despite these challenges. And the importance of forgiveness, flexibility, and persistence in relationships--of finding a way to bridge these gaps with integrity, yet also love and understanding. It's these intelligent, deeper themes that are exactly what we need more of in American children's entertainment today. It's precisely because the US dumbs down children's content that young people take longer to fully grasp the meaning of more layered material when we do show it to them. Again, this is more of an "our country and system" problem than it is a "this movie" problem. That's true whether it's global-outlier levels of social prejudice towards the LGBTQ community and other groups. A need to develop more emotional and spiritual depth, social responsibility and compassion, especially when you compare US norms to those of other cultures. Or the too often unfeeling, spiritually degrading influence on our lives of harsh, heartless systems of capitalism and classism. This has pervasive influence on our stress levels, the strength of our hearts, and our responses to the issues of social diversity, inclusion, and compassion raised in this movie. Our expectations for what children can grasp, do, and be are too low compared to international standards when it comes to personal development and social consciousness. Instead, let's challenge our younger generations to grow into their best selves, in all aspects of our culture, not just formally in education and politics. To feel and care for and be there one another, not just think and function as individuals. That way, instead of continuing the uniquely prejudiced, too often empathy-lacking, socially and emotionally unhealthy conditions of US society, we can proactively solve these issues for the benefit of our own quality of life. Our culture needs more compassion, humanity, emotional intelligence, social responsibility, community, and whole-person childhood development. This movie is one of many steps towards the more compassionate, healthier culture we need today.