Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
STRANGE WORLD
Cert U ★★★ In cinemas now
Not showing at a cinema near you in Qatar, this laudably progressive Disney animation takes us on a fantastic journey through a surreal subterranean world.
Sensitive Searcher Clade (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a 40-year-old farmer in the land of Avalonia, an idyllic nation that developed in isolation from the outside world due to an impassable mountain range.
Searcher is a hero in this surprisingly multi-ethnic nation for discovering an electricityproducing green plant.
When a disease hits the sparkly crop, Searcher and his openly gay son Ethan (Jaboukie Young-white) embark on a mission to search for the heart of its root system.
After entering a crater, they stumble on a fantastic hidden world of wacky multi-coloured critters.
Searcher is also reunited with his alpha male explorer father Jaeger (Dennis Quaid) who went missing on an expedition 25 years earlier.
As they tangle with the local fauna and flora, three generations of Clades discuss issues of masculinity and the often fraught relationships between fathers and sons.
The animation is gorgeous but the characters are thin, jokes are rare and the dialogue is disappointingly earnest.