Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Dennis Quaid, Jaboukie Young-White, Gabrielle Union, and Lucy Liu

Directed by Don Hall

Disney, out November 23

An homage to pulp-era adventure fiction, a timely environmentalist allegory and – more than anything – a story of fathers and sons, and the expectations we put on our children.

Disney’s Strange World, directed by Don Hall and Qui Nguyen, is a paean to the serialized adventure stories of the early twentieth century, especially “hollow earth” and “lost world” stories like Burroughs’ Pellucidar series. Opening with a sequence of pulp-fiction-style magazine spreads, the film leads into an ambiguously-1930ish world of airships and goggles, where explorer Jaeger Clade (Dennis Quaid) leaps, swings and hacks his way through adventure and excitement.

The pitch: Jaeger Clade was entirely driven by his own holy grail – a way through the seemingly impassable mountain range surrounding the setting’s home nation of Avalonia. Twenty-five years ago, on yet another bid to cross the mountains, Jaeger’s son Searcher (Jake Gyllenhaal) discovered Pando, an electricity-producing plant; but Jaeger, unwilling to give up on his dream, refused to return with the discovery. They fought, Searcher and the rest of the team turned back with the Pando, and Jaeger walked into the snow and ice, never to be seen again.

Today, Searcher is the saviour of Avalonia, where Pando-powered technology has transformed daily life; and with his wife Meridian (Gabrielle Union) and son Ethan (Jaboukie Young-White) lives a contented life. But disaster looms – the Pando is dying. Former teammate Callisto Mal (Lucy Liu), now President of Avalonia, calls on Searcher to venture deep underground to the roots of the Pando system and discover the source of the problem.

A moment here to observe that Ethan Clade is gay; that it’s completely canonical; that the story doesn’t make him overcome anyone’s intolerance; and that he’s one of the leading characters. Disney’s danced around LGBT rep for years, throwing scraps at the community, and it’s great to see them finally showing some guts on this. Ethan is a teenage boy nursing his first crush, and we see his cringing embarrassment as his loving, supportive parents fall over themselves to meet the boy he likes, and to see something that normal and wholesome was just wonderful.

What follows is a journey into a beautiful and terrifying world, filled with life that’s utterly alien, fantastically deadly and (because this is Disney) frequently adorable – especially Splat, the squeaking, whistling pseudopod that Ethan befriends early on. There’s action a-plenty, and a few (gentle) jump scares. My nine-year-old daughter Beatrix saw the setting as a kind of metaphor: “It’s about how the world can sometimes feel strange.” We watched another Disney film right before writing this review, Disenchanted, about how the logic of fairy tales doesn’t fit in the real world, and she appreciates the contrast: in Strange World, the setting is often strange, but the people are realistic. There’s no good and evil, just people who disagree about the right way to help others.

It’s an important theme. The quest to save the Pando turns into an environmentalist allegory: things aren’t as cut-and-dried as they first appeared, and the heroes are presented with a choice between the needs of humanity and the good of the world. The dialogue initially set up between the explorer (who pillages nature for his own glory) and the farmer (who shapes nature for the community) is joined by a third voice (the scientist, perhaps?), who is alone in wanting to live in harmony with nature, for its own good. It’s a sophisticated take for a children’s movie, with the potential to set up conversations about oil peak and the climate crisis, and what saving the world will realistically look like in years to come.

But first and foremost, Strange World is a story of fathers and sons, and the expectations our fathers place on us. Relationships between parents and children have been a theme of Disney/Pixar projects for the past few years, of course, from Turning Red to Onward to Encanto, and it’s handled here beautifully. There’s a sort of dialectic – a shift from the bad blood between Searcher and his father to the new tension between Searcher and his son, and an eventual realisation that Ethan doesn’t want to take after either of them – that feels artless and easy, and unfolds beautifully. I can’t speak for Beatrix, but I certainly shed a tear or two…

The environmental theme and the family story unfold together, and reflect on each other. Ethan’s take on the Pando crisis, challenging his father’s and grandfather’s ideas, comes out in lockstep with his growing sense of independence; and there’s a sense that the choice to save the world is Ethan’s to make, as the rising generation. “It’s a story about trying to grow and up and find out who you are,” says Beatrix. “Ethan feels stuck in the middle of his father and grandfather, but he just wants to help the world.”

Verdict: “It’s good for all ages,” says Beatrix. “The little kids will like Splat and the other creatures, while older kids and parents will enjoy the story and what it has to say.” A solid Disney outing, hitting on familiar themes. 8/10.

David Thomas Moore and Beatrix Moore