SMALLFOOT:
YETI-SIZED FUN FOR KIDS AND SERVICEABLE ENOUGH FOR ADULTS!
By Nico Beland
Movie Review: *** out of 4
WARNER BROS. PICTURES
From the studio behind The Lego Movie and Storks comes a yeti of family fun in the new animated film, Smallfoot. I didn’t really have any expectations when walking into this movie after seeing the trailers, it just seemed like a harmless kids’ movie with some colorful animation and decent slapstick.
That was the mindset I had coming in and Smallfoot did not disappoint, it isn’t bad but nothing great either. The film has some good laughs and clever takes on the fish out of water story, but plot wise, it’s pretty familiar territory and relies on a lot of animated movie clichés.
From the mostly unnecessary musical numbers to the inevitable misunderstanding, it’s a kids’ movie on the surface. But as it progresses the film gets better during the second half where it plays around with elements from other humans vs monsters movies that we’ve seen before, and making them feel new.
The film is set in a world where yetis are real and live in a village high in the mountains, and follows a yeti named Migo (voiced by Channing Tatum-21/22 Jump Street, Magic Mike 1 and 2, The Lego Movie) who, after a plane crashes onto the mountain, learns about the existence of a mysterious creature known as the Smallfoot. Naturally, nobody else in the village believes him, so Migo sets off to prove that the Smallfoot exists in the form of wildlife documentary filmmaker, Percy Patterson (voiced by James Corden-The Late, Late Show with James Corden, Peter Rabbit, Teen Titans Go! To the Movies).
It turns out Migo isn’t the only yeti that believes in the Smallfoot’s existence as he comes across the S.E.S. (Smallfoot Evidentiary Society), a group of yetis that have collected data and evidence on the Smallfoot for many years led by the free-spirited, Meechee (voiced by Zendaya-Shake it Up, Spider-Man: Homecoming, The Greatest Showman). Migo, Meechee, and the rest of the S.E.S., Gwangi (voiced by NBA superstar, LeBron James-The LeBrons, Trainwreck, Teen Titans Go!), Kolka (voiced by Gina Rodriguez-Deepwater Horizon, Ferdinand, Annihilation), and Flem (voiced by Ely Henry) begin their journey to the great unknown and prove the Smallfoot is real, along the way they might even discover some secrets about their village and species.
The film also features the voices of rapper, Common (Smokin’ Aces, Terminator: Salvation, John Wick: Chapter 2) as the yeti tribe’s leader, Stonekeeper, Danny DeVito (Batman Returns, Hercules, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) as Migo’s father, Dorgle, Yara Shahidi (Black-ish, Grown-ish, Trollhunters) as Brenda, Jimmy Tatro (22 Jump Street, American Vandal, Super Troopers 2) as Thorp, Patricia Heaton (Beethoven, Everybody Loves Raymond, The Middle) as Mama Bear, and Justin Roiland (Adventure Time, Gravity Falls, Rick and Morty) as Garry.
Overall, Smallfoot is a perfectly decent animated movie, the kids will love the colorful animation, slapstick, and characters and the adults will admire the film’s second half and message about who the real monster is. It’s almost like Monsters, Inc. where the monsters are just as afraid of the humans as they are of them, which is funny because the yetis could easily squish or eat them.
The film plays around with a lot of fish out of water clichés and one of the things I will praise off the bat with this movie is that the yetis and the Smallfoot cannot understand each other. Despite both of them speaking English, the yetis only hear gibberish when the human speaks and the yetis roar from the human’s perspective, so they have to start a bond without speaking, which I found both very funny and extremely clever, why couldn’t Natalie Portman and Kat Dennings speak gibberish in the first two Thor movies? But I digress.
The animation is gorgeous, and I appreciate that it doesn’t try to look like a Disney or Pixar movie, the characters’ designs and movements still maintain the cartoony nature of Warner Bros.’ animation style, almost like you’re watching 3D Looney Tunes cartoons. Sure, it’s not quite as polished or detailed as Disney or Pixar’s animation, but Warner Bros. is able to create visually stunning animated movies with less materials compared to Disney like Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, The Iron Giant, and most recently, Storks, all of these films show what the studio is truly capable of.
The plot is pretty standard and if you’ve seen plenty of animated movies before then you can pretty much catch on to what’s going to happen in the story. Got to have some songs and musical numbers to sell the soundtrack, throw in a butt joke for the little kids to laugh at (Surprisingly there’s not many jokes like that in the movie), and just for good measure add in a “Liar Revealed” or “Misunderstanding” cliché that everyone has already seen plenty of times in other movies and know a happy ending is coming.
It isn’t one of Warner Bros.’ best animated films like Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, The Iron Giant, or The Lego Movie, in fact I’ll go on record and say it’s under Storks and that Teen Titans Go! To the Movies is a better movie than this. But it certainly isn’t like the many misfires they had in the 90s when they were competing with Disney like Space Jam, Quest for Camelot, and Osmosis Jones.
If you have kids that really want to see this movie, Smallfoot is a fine movie for a family outing, granted adults probably won’t be grabbed by the movie right away, but give it some time. Don’t expect anything great but don’t expect a waste of time either, Smallfoot has just enough laughs and charm to appeal to both kids and adults.
From the blog www.moviewatchinpsychopath.blogspot.com
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