Strange World (A Mysterious World) is the new Disney film on an original story. Director Don Hall already Oscar winner for best animated film in 2015 with Big Hero 6, catapults us into an adventure with a familiar and heroic background, prompting us to ask ourselves questions about the future of our planet and suggesting more or less adequate answers to the question in question. Although the intention is right, the product generally does not find an effective match in realitygoing to profess an indifferent and obvious rhetoric like a technological product on Black Friday.
The Adventures of the Clades
Jaeger Clade is the ultimate explorer: Big, fearless and experienced, he is the ideal man of action for all adventures in the jungle, in the arid deserts and in the mountains. To give him shoulder in his legendary exploits there is his son Searcher Clade who, despite not having the adventurous temperament of his father, follows him everywhere from an early age, demonstrating a boundless love for plants and botany. Growing up, Searcher understands that his path is not exploration, and during his father Jaeger’s umpteenth attempt to cross the surrounding mountains Avaloniathe boy finds a miraculous plant capable of producing energy through its fruits.
Searcher and Jeager separate, each convinced that the solution to safeguarding the future of Avalonia is the one they side with, i.e. the father aims to overcome the mountains, the son to cultivate this plant with unlimited capabilities: thanks to Searcher Avalonia thrives, while of the explorer Jaeger Clade lost track for 25 long yearsa period in which the farmer Searcher Clade starts a family and grows up Ethan (now a teenager) who dreams of a harmonious future with nature, not disdaining card games and a first love for a boy who reciprocates even if their relationship is still in its infancy.
In this scenario, President Callisto Mal recruits Searcher to go to discovery of the evil that is infecting the miraculous plants, going into a hole in the ground. A journey into the subsoil populated by monsters of the strangest shapes and colors begins, in which Searcher will have to deal with himself, with his wife Meridian and his son Ethan (who sneaks clandestinely aboard the flying ship): the three will turn the accounts with Jaeger Clade, found alive right in that subsoil.
The Adventure of the Clades is a fairly banal cliché of father/son and grandfather/grandson relationships without too many flights of fancy: the first blames the second, who blames the third, about the progress of one’s life and the expectations that everyone has on the other. All this coincides with the banal and obvious “we must have respect for nature” which objectively, however important, is an argument that is quite redundant.
Record-breaking rhetoric
In Strange World (Un Mondo Misterioso) the technical sector is wonderful: we go from a palette of cold colors, with frozen mountains and dark rocks to the soft colors of cultivated fields and the summer sun to then sink into a rainbow of emotions, lights and sounds never seen before, with strong shades of yellow, red and purple in the underwater world that Searcher and Ethan face together with Jaeger and company. Disney is a teacher in this, and has spared no expense, and elements such as grass, plants and ice are reproduced to perfection. In addition, several scenes with a fixed but three-dimensional image appear in the film, a sort of 3D modeled statue with a truly beautiful two-dimensional texture above it, an art work worthy of the greatest 3D modelers that exist today.
If on the technical side the film doesn’t miss a beat and we find Pannofino’s voice in Italian in the role of Jaeger Clade, on the other hand the problem lies precisely in the texts and in the absolute rhetoric that the film tries to impose on us: the film seems an exasperation of inclusiveness to the point of seeming a parody of the real world, well-written characters find themselves emphasizing obvious clichésfull of paternalism and without a real underlying solution to the problems highlighted by the protagonists’ adventures.
A “strange” result
Although Strange World (Un Mondo Misterioso) has the classic stylistic features of the engaging beginning, the development at times hilarious, and the closing finale, leaving the hall one wonders “But what did he mean?”.
On the one hand, as we have said, there is the exasperated rhetoric of “we respect nature” or the cry “We are killing our planet”, on the other there is an indiscriminate, not at all democratic takeover of power by the protagonists, who choose from scratch “for the good of all” to renounce the use of the energy plant discovered by Searcher, relegating Avalonia to a world no longer digital but analog. We are in a Disney movie, that’s clear, but expect an entire society accept the choice of a few even if for noble purposes, without the slightest semblance of discussion, it’s kinda weird, just like the title of the feature film. The movie is nice but nothing more.
Review
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Strange World (A Mysterious World)
5Final vote
Strange World (Un Mondo Misterioso) is a technically avant-garde film, without too many words however, it is an immense cliché, full of indifferent paternalisms and predominant choices on the lives of all the people who populate Avalonia, without a minimum of democratic semblance , to the cry of “let’s save the planet”. Trivial, obvious and without a real answer to the questions asked. The film is well shot and well done, with characters well characterized but who do nothing but do or say the wrong things. It may be entertaining for as long as it’s being watched, but you’ll probably forget it the minute you walk out of the theater or close the Disney Plus app.
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