Abominable

Abominable

Jill Culton’s film begins in a large Chinese metropolis where an adorable yeti has been taken captive. Breaking free from his cage, he finds himself on a nondescript rooftop. That’s where he meets Yi (Chloe Bennet), who has been working multiple jobs to save the money for her cross-country adventure after her dad died. She quickly realizes that the creature is neither menacing nor fearsome; rather, it’s injured. So Yi heals its wound and names it Everest.

Then before you know it because there’s no reason for anything to take longer than necessary Yi and her neighbors Peng (Albert Tsai), who is very young; and Jin (Tenzing Norgay Trainor), who is very smooth-talking; are setting off across China to get Everest back home to well Everest, so he can be reunited with his family.

Following them are a doctor voiced by Sarah Paulson and Eddie Izzard as an English rare-animal collector who seems villainous but really just needs love or something. All these chases lead up to one final confrontation at the peak sorry top of Mount Everest, where a large gathering of people have come together to celebrate the magical creature they all now believe in. Or maybe it’s just a bunch of tourists who want to see the yeti. The movie never really clarifies.

There are beats that animated films hit because they work, but “Abominable” hits them halfheartedly at best. It feels like it was made by a machine that was given the scripts for the “How to Train Your Dragon” movies and told to cross breed them with “Kung Fu Panda” and “Smallfoot,” creating an offense averse hybrid.

And lord is this script lazy in terms of entertainment value. I’m not saying every animated film should be wall to wall jokes or anything one can even imagine a version of this inspired more heavily by Miyazaki but I wanted to laugh or smile once during this movie, and I never did. Each character says what they need to do or what matters to them and then moves on to the next set piece so they can do it. It’s wildly boring.

The word “abominable” in fact does its best work by dropping words altogether and sticking to nature-driven visuals or music. For example, there are some scenes where Everest shows that he has magical powers over nature like when giant blueberries chase our heroes down a hill or a wave of yellow flowers propels them forward and this is where “Abominable” comes alive.

There’s also a great sequence at the Leshan Giant Buddha statue in Sichuan (although it was a mistake to go with something as obvious as Coldplay on the soundtrack for that scene). “Abominable” is really a road movie across a country that hasn’t been done justice in animated films for American audiences before, and there’s inherent value in that. A lot of the landscapes work. But when it crashes back to the narrative and characters, they just feel dull and again, all sense of wonder at the journey is lost.

Ultimately, what “Abominable” wants most is to be lovable, sweet and sometimes magical like its central character, Yi (voiced by Chloe Bennet). But despite these qualities being present within her story arc as well as throughout many other aspects of this film; they still come across more so forcefully than genuinely.

In fact I would say that instead of feeling like an animated feature about loveability or sweetness with occasional hints towards magic realism which could have been really great! ‘Aba’ seems rather closer resembling mean spirited corporate boss who cares only about making money through exploiting creativity while simultaneously trying (and failing) to connect with younger audiences whom she does not understand at all.

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