Abominable Review

It's the third movie in what I'm now calling the Yeti trilogy. This follows Warner Animation Group's "Smallfoot" last September and Laika's "Missing Link" this April. Now DreamWorks is finishing it off with "Abominable." This is a bit of a strange phenomenon that three different studios all came up with a similar idea for an animated movie. And they all came out in such close proximity to each other that I don't think it's possible for them to be copying off each other. It's like when "Antz" and "A Bug's Life" came out within two months of each other back in 1998 or when "Shark Tale" was released the year after "Finding Nemo." Sometimes these things just happen. In this instance, I feel bad for "Abominable" because it might be the best of the three, yet I'm certain a lot of people skipped it because they saw a Yeti movie being advertised and thought to themselves, "Another one?" Yup. Another one. Granted, neither "Smallfoot" nor "Missing Link" broke the bank in terms of box office performance. "Missing Link" was easily one of the biggest financial failures of 2019, which breaks my heart. But either way, I'm sure the existence of two other Yeti movies contributed, at least in part, to "Abominable" opening to just $20.6 million, one of the worst openings ever for DreamWorks.

In fact, since I've created a lot of DreamWorks charts recently, I will share based on personal findings that if you adjust for ticket price inflation and remove the three Aardman movies that Dreamworks helped co-produce in the early 2000's ("Chicken Run," "Wallace and Gromit" and "Flushed Away"), a $20.6 million opening is the second lowest opening for any DreamWorks Animation film, ahead of only "Sinbad: The Legend of the Seven Seas," which adjusts to a $10.3 million opening with 2019 ticket prices. Even if you don't adjust, the opening for "Abominable" comes in 29th place for DreamWorks out of either 34 or 37 titles (again, depending on whether you count the three Aardman films). If you're curious, the average opening for a DreamWorks film is $54.8 million if you adjust or $44.3 million if you don't adjust. So this is not good news. Luckily for them, this is not a complete loss for them. Expectations were tempered a bit with a budget of only $75 million. Universal, who owns DreamWorks, was expecting a $17-20 million opening going into the weekend. Also, the movie is co-produced by Pearl Studio, a Chinese production company, and most of the movie takes place in China, yet has not opened in any of its major Asian markets, so there's still hope for it.

Enough of all of that, though. Onto the movie, which I think it quite adorable. I have all of these DreamWorks charts because I'm currently in the process of going on a DreamWorks marathon as I want to make a post of my favorite DreamWorks films, like I have in the past with Disney and Pixar. I was going to expedite that marathon so that I could release said list right before going into "Abominable," but I wasn't fast enough. And now I'm glad I didn't succeed because I honestly feel "Abominable" has a solid chance of making into that list of top DreamWorks movies, which is something I wasn't expecting. I thought it would be a cute, fun movie for families, but this movie has some legitimate Pixar moments, if you know what I mean. In fact, the movie that it reminded me the most of was not "Smallfoot" or "Missing Link," but Pixar's "Coco," which sounds like a strange statement on paper, but I'll explain myself here in a bit. First though, the movie follows a teenage girl named Yi who is quite sad and depressed due to the passing of her father, yet suppresses her feelings and closes herself off to her mother and grandmother. One night she finds a baby Yeti hiding on her roof, which leads to quite the magical adventure.

Yes, this is certainly a movie that is rather derivative of a lot of films. And I'm not talking about the two other Yeti movies I've previously mentioned. Rather I'm thinking of any movie where a child or teenager develops a bond with an alien or monster that is being misunderstood by the evil government or evil adults and has to help said alien or monster return home. The biggest example here is "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial," which "Abominable" follows rather closely. This is certainly not the first movie to try to summon the magic of "E.T." and it most definitely won't be the last. But yet it is a great example of the idea that you can take a familiar idea and still create a good movie if your execution is on point, which is definitely the case here. Our Yeti, who they name Everest since that's where he's trying to get back to, is absolutely adorable. He's just like a baby Yeti, or young Yeti, who doesn't have any idea what's going on, but is scared and hurt. When he learns that Yi is his friend, an immediate bond is formed that is equivalent of your typical child/pet relationship. Because, yeah, that's what separates this from "Smallfoot" and "Missing Link." In those two movies, the Yetis are anthropomorphized. They have human qualities. In "Abominable," the Yetis are like animals.

What ensues is the story of a girl who is lonely and depressed, yet is able to find a connection with this lonely baby Yeti that helps her discover what's really important. But it's not just her and the Yeti. There's two other human characters involved in this journey, a young boy named Peng and a fellow teenage boy named Jin. Peng and Jin end up on this journey to find Everest's home almost by accident. Yi is simply trying to hide Everest from the evil government when Peng and Jin happened to be dragged along with them. Peng and Everest are hilarious together because they are about the same age, or at least the same level of maturity, so they spend the whole movie goofing off like two young kids while the older teenagers in Yi and Jin try to navigate everything. Jin is a stuck-up teenage boy who doesn't want to be here with them, but he's there because he feels responsible for Peng. Luckily there's no romance arc between Yi and Jin, I was worried they were going to go that route, but instead they go the much better route of the four of them developing a strong, believable friendship as they learn to rely on each other for help and support. And yes, Everest is a magical Yeti, which leads to some beautiful scenes, both in terms of animation and theme. 

And that brings me to my "Coco" comparison. In regards to plot and characters, the two movies are quite a bit different. But the central themes and the way they were executed felt very similar to me. Said themes is that of family. Both movies are centered around a young protagonist who perhaps doesn't fully understand the importance of family, yet by the end are able to really understand and appreciate what they have due to an adventure they went on away from the family. Sure, "Coco" might be a more well-rounded movie with a stronger emotional punch, but "Abominable" has shades of "Coco" scattered throughout, which I wasn't expecting. Both movies even have a grandmother figure who is key to the story and are centered around non-American cultures. Some of the magic scenes in "Abominable" reminded me of some of the animation of "Coco" and both movies have a theme song that helps drive home the emotion. "Abominable" uses Coldplay's "Fix You" rather brilliantly--and I believe it's an arrangement that's specific to the movie--while topping things off with a new song by Bebe Rexha called "Beautiful Life." There were a couple of other songs used, but it was Coldplay and Bebe that stood out to me.

The only thing that really bothered me in the movie were the mustache-twirling villains that were only there because we needed a villain chasing the group. I get the idea of conflict being important here. If it were just these three kids going on an adventure with this magical Yeti, the movie may have felt a bit empty. But that was one part where the execution wasn't done so well. I didn't even really understand the motivations of these villains outside money and popularity. Yes, the whole movie was very derivative, but with everything else they found a way to make you gravitate towards the characters and feel the emotions of the movie. Thus it was kinda disappointing when they couldn't come up with a solid villain to drive this home, especially since this evil organization got a significant amount of screen time. It ended up detracting from the film. That one complaint aside, this movie came as a very pleasant surprise. How it ends up stacking up to all the other DreamWorks movies is a complete mystery to me. I have no idea what my DreamWorks list is going to look like, which makes for a fun undertaking. But "Abominable" is a solid effort from them. If you're in search for a good animated movie to watch, I highly recommend this one. My grade is an 8/10.