Animated feature films are a particularly hard business to be in. The turnaround to produce and release an animated feature usually takes as little as three years and as many as five. To top it off, you are usually up against the giants of the industry that are PIXAR and the Walt Disney Animation Studios. The target market is particularly fickle (do you market to the kids directly or to the parents?), and in the age of Disney+ and Netflix, how do you even get children into cinemas to spend (their parents’) money?
In 2019, Dreamworks Animation released Abominable, their second animated feature film that year following How To Train Your Dragon: Hidden World. Don’t worry if you don’t remember this movie, it never made it to cinemas here after being banned due to a political maritime dispute.
Abominable tells the story of Yi (played by Chloe Bennet of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. fame) who stumbles upon a young Yeti who had escaped from the compound of a wealthy businessman/explorer (Eddie Izzard) and his researcher (Sarah Paulson). Yi, together with her neighbour/friend/popular kid about town Jin (Tenzing Norgay Trainor) and Peng (Albert Tsai) help the Yeti escape Shanghai and head across the country to get it back to its home, Mount Everest.
Basically, this is very much your bog-standard kids-go-on-an-adventure-to-help-some-magical-thing-escape-while-a-wealthy-businessman-and-scientist-want-to-capture-said-magical-thing-to-study-and-or-make-money-and-or-become-famous animated film.
Abominable is a sweet movie. There’s a little bit about family, there’s a dead parent, it’s about friendship, you know, all the greatest hits. Abominable is also quite funny. There are some genuine laughs in it and some really good jokes. Abominable is also quite emotionally stirring, with moments that are genuinely touching.
Abominable, however, does have a lot of China. Which you can’t avoid seeing as how it’s a cross country adventure. In their journey to Mount Everest the characters hit all of China’s greatest tourist hits. From Shanghai (and a King Kong-esque Oriental Pearl Tower scene) to the Yellow Mountains, and the Gobi dessert. The Yangtze river and the Yangtze plain. The Leshan Giant Buddha (where Coldplay’s track Fix You plays) and finally the Himalayas.
The problem with Abominable, however, is that it never really sweeps you away. It isn’t by any measure a bad film. It’s fine. It’s perfectly okay. It does just barely enough, avoiding any kind of major pitfalls, so much so that you can’t really complain. It just isn’t memorable.
There will be people who will have issues with this movie. The aforementioned nine-dash controversy is removed from this version, but many will also see the presence of China in the film as both product and a political position. To them I say, “so what?” This is an animated film for kids. If you have issues with it, use the movie as a way to talk to your children about soft politics and maritime law. I’m sure they’ll thank you for it.
Oh and while you’re at it, tell them about Tenzing Norgay Trainor’s grandfather, Tenzing Norgay.
Abominable
97 minutes
Director: Jill Culton
Writer: Jill Culton
Cast: Chloe Bennet, Albert Tsai, Tenzing Norgay Trainor, Eddie Izzard, Sarah Paulson, Tsai Chin, and Michelle Wong
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