Saturday, October 26, 2019

Abominable (2019)

Long ago, I noticed the trend of copycat movies.  I don’t think I was even the first to do so.  One astronaut movie gets released and suddenly, you have three or four more over the next year.  One alien movie gets released and it’s followed by another alien movie or two.

In 2018, we got Smallfoot.  It was an animated movie about yeti that interacted with humans.  That was followed by Missing Link, a Sasquatch who called upon a human to help him find the Yeti.

Do you want to guess what Abominable is about?

The movie starts with a girl named Yi, who finds a yeti living on the roof of her apartment building.  She and two of her neighbors set off on an adventure to return him to his home. The Yeti is even named Everest, as that’s where he’s from.  To put a little pressure on, they’re chased by the seemingly evil businessman, Mr. Burnish.  He wants the yeti so that he might prove that the creature exists.

To be fair, I enjoyed all three movies.  Maybe Smallfoot wasn’t the best.  In fact, it was the weakest of the three so far, which is ironic in that it was the first to be released.  My point is that we do seem to have three distinct movies.  Yes, it’s a little predictable.  You know that the yeti will get home to his family despite a few major setbacks.  It’s a long journey and they will have a few obstacles to overcome.

Each of the three movies I mentioned is at least visually distinct enough that you’ll probably have a favorite.   Of the three movies, this is probably the one I would expect to do the best.  The movie is at least animated well, which is a good thing here.  Yi, Everest and friends visit a few major landmarks which are all rendered in detail.

If you’re looking to watch all of them, I would suggest skipping Smallfoot unless you have children.  Missing Link was done with stop motion, which is going to give it a different look.  (Abominable was done with CGI, as you might have gathered from the posters.)

I do think that this would be a good movie to take children to see.  There are some tense moments where Everest is at risk.  There are maybe one or two scenes that would scare smaller children, like Everest being caged.  Still, it’s one that parents can enjoy as well.  At least it’s a fun movie.


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