Abominable

Abominable is a cute, safe playing animation. It has a good message and themes but keeps it at surface level. The animation is fluffy but there are a few beautiful visuals. The adventure is exciting without getting too harrowing and the characters are likeable enough with one or two being a tad grating. Definitely geared towards kids, but there is a bit adults can get out of it as well.

Lacked in depth and not the most original story, but scenes are masterfully crafted and absolutely stunning, to the point that you can overlook other minor flaws.

This is a heart felt movie. I loved it. Ignore the technical criticism. Ignore the reference to political overtones. All criticism seemed superficial...perhaps they were fake. It is obviously a kids movie, but as an adult I left with good feelings. Very few movies or television shows do that for me. Children in the theater cheered at the end.

There were some beautiful color choices and effects, but the plot overall was super flat. The pacing was all over the place and I really felt very little connection to these characters. The trailers really made it seem like it could've been something great and it just didn't follow through.

Abominable Review:

Abominable is the story of three teenagers as they help a Yeti return to his family while avoiding a wealthy man and a zoologist who want it for their own needs. The trailer for this looked just adorable to me when I saw it. The story to me seemed as if it would be pretty touching and just overall enjoyable. Based on the trailer I was exactly right. I found myself enjoying Abominable. As an overall story I think it worked for most of the duration of the movie. A teenage girl, Yi, finds a Yeti on her roof and with discovering him, she finds out stuff about herself. I loved the incorporation of Yi's violin playing. The animation was actually correct on home one should play. Like in some animated movies they'll have people play instruments similar to how they're played, but not exactly. The vibrato, bow hold, and everything was correct. Later there's a cool thing with the violin where the animation was beautiful. The animation was pretty good in this. The backgrounds were simplified, sort of like a comic, and the characters had more detail, but not a lot. Some parts I think needed some work with the animation. To continue on with the story, it was still enjoyable. Predictable, but that's to be expected. Dreamworks made one of the best animated films of all time, How to Train Your Dragon. Abominable has similarities to that film and I could help but see parallels throughout. Basically what I'm saying is it's not the most original idea. I liked the family aspect of the movie. The three main characters are all related and there's just some family stuff to it that worked for me. One of the three, Peng, had a very annoying voice. It's not his fault but wow did that get annoying after a long time. Overall I think this is just an enjoyable movie. It may be because I saw this a week ago or this is all I got out of the movie, but this is a shorter review. I'd recommend this movie. I could probably see this being nominated in the awards season just because this one had messages throughout and critics did like it.

My Grade: B