Abominable

Voices of: Chloe Bennett, Albert Tsai, Tenzing Norgay Trainor, Joseph Izzo, Eddie Izzard, Sarah Paulson, Tsai Chin, Michelle Wong
Directed by: Jill Culton, Todd Wilderman
Rating: PG
Genre: Animation, Adventure, Comedy
2019

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: Three teenagers help a Yeti get out of the city and back to his home.

Review:

Tim: One of the things I really liked about Abominable was that even a few years ago, the story would have been that this white, American family travels to Asia and gets involved in this story. As Hollywood slowly becomes more diverse, more international, we need to celebrate the small steps forward like this. I appreciated that the movie is set in Shanghai, features Chinese characters, voiced by an appropriately diverse cast. It helps that this is an effective, entertaining movie, too.

The story is certainly appealing to the target demographic. Three young teenagers embark on this great adventure to return a Yeti to his home. Along the way, they see beautiful sights, narrowly avoid capture by the bad guys, and watch as their friendship grows. The skeleton of the story isn't unique, but the setting, the cultural references, and some of the unique spins makes the story feel fresh and worthwhile. I had a lot of fun watching these characters on this adventure. My four year-old son was likewise entertained.

One of the slight drawbacks of the film is that the characters are only mildly memorable. They were never boring, but they weren't so compelling that they become classic characters. Their friendship is entertaining, their banter is fairly fun. The characters were decently developed so they never felt one-dimensional. I wouldn't necessarily sign up to see these characters in a trilogy of films, but they work with this one. The Yeti, Everest, is fairly good. I enjoyed the depiction of his powers and he was fun to watch. Likewise, he wasn't especially memorable, either. There were 3 (!!!) animated yeti movies in 2019. It's hard to differentiate Everest from those others. Again, there's nothing wrong with his character, but the movie itself doesn't really differentiate itself.

The voice cast is good. I really like Chloe Bennett from her work on "Agents of Shield", so I was quite glad to see she was voicing the main character here. She does good work. I really believe she's a solid actress and I hope she gets more and more opportunities. Albert Tsai and Tenzing Norgay Trainor both did good work bringing their characters to life. Eddie Izzard is always solid in voice work, and Sarah Paulson was effective as well. As a whole, the cast do their jobs well.

The animation is strong. It's funny that beautifully rendered animated films are no longer a differentiator. I can't remember the last time I felt a sense of awe about how an animated movie was depicted (maybe Dreamworks' own How to Train Your Dragon). This movie looks great. It was somewhat muted because many scenes take place in the snow, which is just white. However, the film's story wisely uses a number of different locals and those come to life with the beautifully rendered animation. It was definitely a plus for this film.

It's funny, as mentioned before, three yeti-type animated movies were all released during 2019. In some ways, this hurts all three because none of them feel especially unique. To be fair, each is indeed different and has a number of unique qualities to it. Smallfoot feels closest to this one. It's hard to say which movie was better- they're neck-and-neck in terms of quality and there's things I enjoyed more about each of them. It's so close, I'd have to see them again. Missing Link was a decent movie, but clearly less effective to me than either Smallfoot or Abominable. Of course, critics disagreed, as that's the only one of the three to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Film. Oh well.

Abominable won't ever be a classic animated film, or even a top-tier one. However, it's an entertaining, effective, and worthwhile story. I enjoyed it, my son enjoyed it, and I would imagine most viewers would respond favorably to it.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating- 7



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: Smallfoot, Missing Link