To Catch a Yeti

In 1994, Meat Loaf fiercely attempted to end his acting career by playing Big Jake Grizzly, a hunter who tries to catch a yeti.

Okay, brace yourselves, here it comes: the mighty yeti is about 20 inches tall and looks like the furry result of a disastrous love affair between a Gremlin and a Monchichi. Yikes.

The Yeti escapes to the big city and hides out with an American family. The whole thing is of course reminiscent of E. T. and ALF... if you subtract the homesickness drama and all the humor. The frazzled teddy doesn't talk, he just stares super cutely. He hardly ever moves, just squats around or is carried. The puppet animation is just lousy, so that there is no sympathy for the annoying sit-down monster.

This movie is so stupid that you wonder how something like this could ever be filmed. It thankfully only ran on TV and was released on VHS, but my goodness, real people watched this! The makers should be prosecuted for this.

Folks, I am a movie buff. Not just that, I am a BAD MOVIE buff. And a Tolkien nerd. Therefore, few are as worthy to comment on this movie as me, Captain Worthy-riffic.

This is the single worst piece of art ever.

I have seen 'The Stupids'. I have the scene where Christopher Lee says 'Release the Drive Bee' on my computer. I have graphed Costner's slow decline into the abyss. My Jamaican roommate and I have had many discussions into the actual net-worth of Billy Baldwin, and found that we could pawn him on the black market for several Eagles, if both the Eagles and the Eagle-seller didn't know what a movie was. But we can all agree, there is not a work in humanity worse than 'To Catch a Yeti'.

Granted, it tries hard, although I have assumed it was made by a sadistic epileptic ferret, the only explanation. I can forgive the fact that you can see the strings controlling the Yeti, which was almost certainly bought in the discount bin at K-Mart. I can forgive the fact that you can see the outline of a city building in the background of the scenes where the explorers are in the Tibetan mountains. And I can forgive the fact that I am considering dropping out as an English major, because any language that can take it up the tailpipe with dialogue like this probably won't survive much longer.

BUT I CAN"T FORGIVE THE HALF AN HOUR WHERE THE HUSBAND OF THE HOME ON ANY-STREET USA BERATES HIS FAMILY BECAUSE HE THINKS THEY STOLE HIS PUMPKIN PIE. MAY DEATH FIND THIS MAN SLOWY, PAINFULLY, AND PREFERABLY IN THE TALONS OF A MAJESTIC EAGLE.

Remember Folks,

Do not meddle, In the affairs of Dragons. For you are crunchy, And taste good with catsup.

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.