The wonder-filled escapism that comes with Disney and its magical animated films is now lost to the past. Business and ambition have taken over the world of childlike awe and stuffed it instead with broad brushstrokes of profit-incurring changes that bring with them a promise of uprooting all that makes a signature Disney classic. The latest animated film, Strange World is proof of that and it’s no surprise that the production of what should have been the next Oscar-winning achievement for the company is now tanking in its very first critical review.
World Mourns the Declining Magic of Disney Animation
With Strange World receiving a disheartening critical review that sums up to a total of 74% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the rapidly changing world has been mourning the loss of the comfort-film era. The light shines harsher on the fact that Disney in its humble simplicity possessed the ability to instantly transport its audience to a world of wonder and magic where song and dance and extraordinary stories made our days shine brighter for the span of the animated masterpieces. Films like Moana, Frozen, and Encanto were among the last few of these masterpieces that held the definitive spark of the Disney animation magic.
With Raya and the Last Dragon taking a nosedive into the pool of gorgeous animation, representation, and an overall cultural ethos, the film’s tone matches its ambition in a perfect harmony of all that makes a Disney animated into a classic. This is what Strange World eventually fails to capture. In its expansive and scarily ambitious narrative, the film overarches in its tone of grandeur so much so that it forgets to balance the socio-political tone of the film with the intergenerational simplicity that has proven time and again to work for the House of Mouse.
In the end, Strange World becomes a parable to be told to scare away anti-environmentalists and a tale that in all seriousness introspects how each inadvertent decision can affect our legacies — a combination that is far more grave for a Disney audience’s liking.
Strange World Fails to Bring Awe & Wonder to the Screens
The visuals of Disney’s Strange World are breathtaking and serve the sole reason why one would return time and again to spend an hour and a half in its company. The immersive and extraordinarily colorful frames never fail to set alight the narrative and keep the audience hypnotized by its unmistakable expertise. But this is not the only factor that defines a Disney animated film. Strange World stumbles at the threshold between the permissible and the experimental and leans too much into the latter territory and subsequently fails to truly portray what lies at the heart of the film — a fun Disney adventure.
Also read: Disney: 5 Animated Films That Made Us Believe In Love
Enabled by the star power of Jake Gyllenhaal, Lucy Liu, Jaboukie Young-White, Dennis Quaid, Gabrielle Union, and Alan Tudyk, Strange World cannot survive in its well-rounded 102-minute timeline. In its closing statement, it then becomes truly disappointing to witness the slow degradation of a studio juggernaut from its core ideology and practice in the aftermath of one of the greatest decades of progress and reinvention under the overseeing eye of Bob Iger.
Strange World premieres on November 23, 2022.
Source: Discussing Film
