Metacritic reviews

Abominable has charms to soothe the savage child.

Abominable delivers all the notes you expect from family-friendly animation these days. And, thankfully, a little bit more.

The winning, warm nature of this China-set family film can’t be denied, and for all its predictable elements, Abominable is still well worth the trip.

The movie is gentle enough for younger kids, but doesn’t feel obligated to play straight to a 5-year-old’s sensibility. For the first time in a while, DreamWorks seems to be trusting its filmmakers with a semi-original idea, rather than racing breathlessly to the finish line.

The second half’s series of hollow visual spectacles foreground the film as a corporate product.

It’s a little too treacly and childish in places, with a storyline that goes exactly where you expect. But those drawbacks are somewhat compensated for by a series of arresting set-pieces, each one taking us to a spectacular Far East location not yet visited by this kind of high-powered Hollywood cartoon.

Despite its Chinese setting and characters, the movie doesn’t feel appreciably different from so many other previous tales of lost young people who learn friendship through a pet or extra-terrestrial, and the story’s broad humour and pedestrian plotting don’t add much to this perfunctory fable.

The journey is wondrous for the characters, less compelling for the audience.

It sometimes feels Scrooge-like to come down on a sweet and simple film like this one, but kids can get bored too. And they will here.

Abominable isn’t a bad film, and the Chinese violin renders some moments quite touching. But it is dull and some of that comes from the similar animated films that beat it to market over the past year.