Movie Thoughts: Abominable (2019)

• Released: 27 September 2019
• Directed by: Jill Culton, Todd Wilderman
• Running time: 1 h 37 min
• Rating 3.5/5

Synopsis

A girl befriends a young yeti and goes on a journey to return him to his home in the Himalayas.  

My Thoughts

Abominable… This is one of these movies I was really hyped for when I first saw the trailers, but then never went to see in cinemas when the controversy due to the Nine-Dash Line happened. But now that I got a chance to see it, I was still curious. Was the rest good? Bad? Just mediocre? Eh, why not have a look?

The story was kind of basic, but it was executed pretty decently. It’s not How To Train Your Dragon in terms of taking something overdone and doing something brand new with it. That said, I still think it’s quite good! We’ve got this beautiful journey the characters embark on. It also has a very heartwarming connection to the late father of Yi, who (as it turns out) wanted to take her on the exact journey they ended up coincidentally going on to deliver Everest back home. Nothing groundbreaking I’d say, but still done properly.

The characters are quite good, too. We have Yi learning to accept things as they are after her father died and she never quite recovered from that. Peng and Jin grow as characters, too. Even one of the major villains turns out to have the capability to change for the better in the end. It’s just done very well. The only character I really found myself not getting into is the *sigh* twist villain. The movie sets up the old man who is a Yeti-hunter to be the main big bad with the scientist lady being the lesser evil, but in the end they pull the big ol’ switcharoony and it turns out she’s bad and he’s the one who does the right thing. Just didn’t care for her at all, even as a villain.

The animation is nothing short of beautiful. Dreamworks delivers once again with a breathtaking story, visually at the very least. Movements are good, smooth and realistic, and the fantastical elements really work as well! I honestly don’t have much to say on this front, it’s just really good.

As for the other visuals, they are mostly the same. The environments are really pretty, the colors are well-chosen and fit the scenes, you just want to explore these locations. The human character designs work really well, too! I did have a little trouble getting into Everest’s design at first, as I thought he kinda looked like a rejected soft Trollhunters character, but you grow to like his design throughout the film.

The humor was maybe a tad juvenile at times, but I overall had a good time watching this and thought it suited well enough to the tone of the movie. It’s decent.

The soundtrack was nice, too. The background music (mostly the violin parts) were beautiful and worked a lot. There are some instances where pop-like songs will be playing in the backgrounds, though, which did at times kind of take me out of the movie.

Finally, for the voice acting, it was good, too!

If you look past the controversy, I definitely think this has something good to offer! It may not be the most outstanding of Dreamworks’ features, but I did like what I saw.

So, do I recommend you watch this? Depends. Maybe you can find a torrent or something, who knows. I won’t recommend seeing this in cinemas, however, due to the propaganda. But, again, that’s for you to figure out. If nothing I talked about here spoke to you, even disregarding the controversy, then don’t bother. But if you think there’s something here like I do, maybe check it out.