To Catch a Yeti

To Catch a Yeti (1995)

BOMB (out of 4)

Incredibly horrid rip of E.T. has a big time hunter (Meat Loaf) tracking a yeti only to find it living with a family and beloved by the little girl. Even on a cute kids movie level, this film is quite horrid and comes off more creepy than sweet, which was its main goal. The movie is awful on every level and this includes the performances, which range from bad to suicide worthy. Meat Loaf has been good in several films but he's really bad here. The Loaf goes over the top and his performance is all over the place as if he doesn't know what to do. Chantellese Kent plays the young girl who befriends the yeti and she turns in one of the worst performances from a child actor. The screenplay is all over the place as well and the jokes are way too forced to work. The director apparently realized this was going to be junk because I can't see any signs of actual directing being done.

Well... it's a movie. About a yeti. That people are trying to catch.

Strangely enough, the yeti is caught numerous times, so the movie really lives up to that title. In fact, that's about all that happens.

I only just saw this through Rifftrax and even with the boys mocking it, this was really, really bad. This is the kind of movie that really does make you scratch your head and wonder "how did this get greenlit? Who gave this thing a budget? Are those people even allowed to make movies anymore?". I get that not every movie in the 90's had big budgets and fancy effects, but this is just horrid to watch. I keep seeing comments about this being an ET rip-off, but I think they were trying more for bigfoot "Harry and the Henderson's".

Even watching Meatloaf degrade himself in this tripe is painful to watch, like they told him to just "do whatever", but even he didn't seem to have any direction on what he wanted to do. He just doesn't come off as menacing in this movie. For that matter, I was more afraid of him as JB's father in 'The Pick Of Destiny'.

His sidekick, the bumbling idiot aptly named Blubber, just makes you cringe at every line and every move he makes. There are good goofy sidekicks and there are bad goofy sidekicks. Guess where he falls in? It's one of those instances where you want to ask Big Jake why he even keeps the moron around if he just screws up everything. Blubber is the Starscream to Jake's Megatron.

Then there's the "evil" son Wesley. Pretty sure he takes the cake as far as menacing goes. The costume department keeps having him dress up as some Nazi or Russian looking military officer. It honestly reminds me of Cartman from South Park, but done very badly. I wonder if they were trying to do some tounge-in-cheek reference to Wesley Crusher with the repeated "shut up, Wesley" lines, but I don't see a connection.

The rest of the cast is forgettable and wooden, like this movie, so no need to talk further about them.

No yeti's were harmed in the making of this movie, but you'll wish they had been because it's so blatantly obvious that it's just a puppet that I kept expecting Jeff Dunham to show up and shove his hand up its rear and make it talk. I'm assuming they didn't have a budget to get a guy to put a yeti suit on, probably couldn't get permission for it to shoot in the city locations either. They make up some BS about its size to cover up the fact that it's just some mutant-looking mogwai that almost turned into a gremlin, but kept its fur.

Overall, I think the only way to watch this movie is with the Rifftrax dialogue, it at least makes it tolerable.

TO CATCH A YETI is an awful kid's adventure film about a baby Yeti that finds itself kidnapped by a pair of hunters and transported to America, where it falls in with your average family and yearns to get back home to the snow again. That's the entire plot of the film, which mainly consists of dumb scenes involving a model Yeti that rips off the look of Gizmo in the GREMLINS movies. Highlights of the film include the Yeti going on a skateboard ride through a local park and being smuggled in somebody's backpack. The animatronic effects are very poor, leaving this looking like a plastic model for the most part.

Even worse are the performances, especially those from a couple of the worst child actors I've seen in a while. A couple of the women seemed to have British accents and if they truly are British actors then I can only apologise for their presence here. Meat Loaf is the most fun actor as the stereotypical villain but even he's poor, just slightly less poor than everything and everyone else around him.

I only watched this to see just how bad it was and because it involved Meatloaf (RIP). Speaking of which, what the hell was he thinking when he signed on for this? I'm not at all surprised this took less than two weeks to film, because it completely shows.

Meatloaf plays a hunter named Big Jake Grizzly who is hired to catch a Yeti by an evil millionaire while accompanied by his dim-witted assistant, Blubber. The Yeti stows away aboard a plane, winds up in New York, is taken in by a suburban family and is named Hank by the daughter, Amy. Naturally, Grizzly and Blubber follow to continue their hunt and collect their payment while shenanigans ensue as Amy tries to send Hank home.

First off, the little Yeti puppet looks nothing like a Yeti and spoke volumes of the films crummy budget. He looked very cheap and unimpressive, as if he were a reject puppet made for a kids show from a decade prior, and his rat-like tail, and buck teeth made him look hideous. He hardly even moved by himself at all, and every sound he made was annoying. The rest of the effects were just as bad, with choppy editing and poorly executed slow/fast motion during the action scenes.

All of the actors are as wooden as 2x4s as they phone in their roles. Meatloaf himself couldn't save this movie and looks like he doesn't even want to be here. The other characters are either dull or as annoying as the Yeti, and worst of all was Wesley, the spoiled rich kid and likely future serial killer since he just wants the Yeti so he can abuse it.

Ultimately, this was an ET rip-off mixed horribly with the Yeti genre. I highly doubt even young children would enjoy this. Personally, I was bored to tears and couldn't even be bothered to watch anymore after the first half-hour, because that was more than enough to conclude that this film is trash and deserves its low rating.

I don't know why I thought this might be good. Turns out it's virtually comedy free and full of plot holes. There was one only funny moment in the entire movie. The best joke was when they were in the train station and they announced the last train to Clarksville, but it wasn't funny enough to make me laugh. You might like this if your are 8 years old but anyone older won't enjoy this for a minute.