Review: The Crystal Planet has a lot more to offer than Diane Warren's latest song

The Crystal Planet got on my radar pretty early this year when I realized it features a song penned by Diane Warren, which automatically puts it in the hunt for an Oscar nomination. Warren, the prolific songwriter behind Oscar-nominated hits like "How Do I Live" from Con Air and "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" from Armageddon, has been nominated at the big show seventeen times (including every year since 2017) without ever taking home a competitive trophy, though she has received a much-deserved honorary Oscar. So when Warren has a song in a movie, it's worth paying attention to.

Lucky for viewers, The Crystal Planet isn't a movie that feels like a chore to get through (for those of us who try to watch all the Oscar nominees each year, there's usually a few). Instead, it's a lively and fun little sci-fi adventure about robot animals and dealing with grief, corporate greed and political manipulation. Like the titular planet, there's a lot more going on beneath the surface here, certainly more than I expected going in. 

Rea and her father are new arrivals to the Crystal Planet, leaving behind an Earth that has been decimated by over-mining of natural resources. Now, the capitalist jerk behind much of that destruction, Mordokan, is governor of this new planet, and he's up to new schemes. Haunted by the death of his wife, he's eager to make robotic animals that are indistinguishable from the real deal. That way, pet owners will never have the mourn the death of their beloved animals. The irony, of course, is that these robotic animals are prone to glitching, often having their heads pop off, peeing uncontrollably, or exploding. New kinds of trauma for kids to process. Rea's dad is being brought in to help fine-tune these robots. Though his work isn't likely to touch the most disturbing part of the manufacturing process: that the real animals are processed into green goo that is then unceremoniously dumped into the planet's core.

And down in that core lives a vibrant but small collection of "alien" (not actually alien since this is, you know, their home planet) creatures that have abandoned the surface in the wake of a long-ago disaster. Now they huddle in their caves, trying to survive. One of these creatures, a young Gorgon (not like Medusa...they look more like a bear with long torsos and extra appendages) named Burgy ends up on the surface, where he's found by Rea and her cautious neighbor Andy. The kids decide to help Burgy find his way home, but Mordokan's nasty little daughter has other plans: she wants Burgy to be her pet. (And Mordokan, naturally, wants to clone Burgy so everyone on the planet can have one, thus ensuring him reelection.)

The film is most concerned with the grieving process, and the different responses we have to loss. Rea's mother died in a mining-related accident on Earth, and she feels like she hasn't had a chance to say goodbye. Instead, her father has up and moved them to this new planet, a move she sees as running away. Mordokan wants to eliminate the possibility of loss altogether, thereby making grief a rare emotion (though, you know, humans are still going to die). Burgy is on his own grieving journey, since he watched his mom get taken away by an aquatic monster before he made his way to the surface. The way The Crystal Planet takes on these difficult emotions reminded me of the kids' movies of the nineties, when I was growing up: not afraid to confront the darkness and acknowledge the harder parts of being a human (and of being a kid, specifically).

Though thematically quite sound, the story gets a bit messy as the kids end up below the surface sans Burgy, kind of sidelining them from the main action. When you watch a movie like this, you want the kids to be the heroes, and they still are involved in saving the day, but for a good chunk of the proceedings, their parents (Andy's mom is Mordokan's rival in the governor race) have the take over in saving Burgy on the surface. I found myself feeling a bit impatient for the kids to get back topside, where it felt like they should be for the narrative to pay off. Eventually, they make it there, but it's maybe a bit too little too late.

This isn't the most visually dazzling movie you'll see this year, but I really appreciated the thoughtful designs, particularly with the film's setting. The buildings have a neat retro-futurist vibe to them, like what people imagined the future would look like in the fifties. While background characters often look a bit blank/stiff, the main cast is nicely designed, and I especially liked Nanny Bot, a literal helicopter parent assigned to Andy who reminded me of M-O from WALL-E, very determined in its mission to keep an eye on its ward. (I also can't stop thinking about the cool overalls Rea wears, which look like corduroy with built-in kneepads...they're so cool.)

As for the song? Warren collaborates with Halle Bailey on "Somewhere We All Belong," which Bailey sings. It's a nice-enough song, if a bit generic-sounding, but Warren has been nominated for lesser works. I like that the song actually features in the movie itself rather than being relegated to the end credits (though a longer version of it plays there). It touches on the movie's theme of coexistence and belonging, apt as Rea starts to feel more at home on her new planet and learns how to move on from loss.

The Crystal Planet has US distribution, but I don't know when it'll be released here. I'm assuming this year, so it can put Warren back in the Oscar hunt? But for now, it's playing in theaters in Czech Republic and Slovakia, and will continue rolling out in additional countries over the next few weeks. If it's opening in your country, I recommend giving it a go.