Abominable? Far From It
DreamWorks’ latest animated feature, Abominable, didn’t show any sign of promise during its horrible marketing campaign. The story felt familiar, the movie’s characters looked mega-cringe and everything reeked of “been there, done that”. While the movie does have a predictable structure, its story on Yi (Chloe Bennet)’s quest to bring a Yeti she names “Everest” back home to the Himalayas is beautiful visual poetry that makes for a wonderfully touching animated film.
I’m not the biggest fan of Chloe Bennet — acting-wise and personal-life wise. Yes, her acting chops definitely improved on Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. when the character of “Skye” was revealed to be Daisy Johnson/Quake, but she still doesn’t impress me as a lead-actress. In this movie, she’s fine as Yi, but she clearly wasn’t the right choice for the character. The real stars of the movie are Eddie Izzard as Mr. Burnish, an alpinist who wants to show the Yeti to the world, whose character arc is much more compelling than the highly-predictable Yi and Sarah Paulson as Dr. Zara — a completely batshit villain performance that made me laugh harder than anything in the movie. Her performance ranges from “Normie Zoologist with a British Accent” (a perfect british accent, at that) to crazed American money-driven maniacal villain. It’s basically “Evil Merida”, near the end, and it’s fantastic.
Many of the film’s best sequences are enhanced by its 3D — one of the rare times that an animated film is worth seeing in the format. The opening sequence is presented in POV, and is wholly enhanced by the film’s use of 3D. The action sequences also are a MUST in 3D — enhancing the film’s so-so CGI animation (I’ve seen better work from DreamWorks in February’s How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World). They are also incredibly exciting, tightly edited, and reminiscent of the pop-chinese 3D animated film Ne Zha. The movie is also surprisingly funny, with some fantastic jokes in the form of the side-character Peng (Albert Tsai) and his relationship with “Everest”. Some of the physical comedy works brilliantly, alongside laugh-out-loud running gags involving snakes that say “Woop!” and a henchman named Dave. Some of the humor is so whip-smart that you don’t expect to laugh this hard, some of it is low-class kid-sized humor. You can’t win ’em all!
However, the best moments of the movie involves a violin that toy with your emotions and “Everest” soulfully listening to music. Yi’s journey becomes incredibly personal, when “Everest” repairs her violin and she starts playing it, with strings made out of his fur. The scene in which she takes her violin after Everest was brutally tranquilized by Dr. Zara and plays her heart out is absolutely phenomenal, and one of the best visual animated sequences of the year by far. Everything that’s emotionally impactful is conveyed through the film’s imagery as Yi plays her late father’s violin with her heart & soul. Moments like these are what make Abominable incredibly memorable and literally brought me back up. It’s a film that will reach childen and adults for its powerful message on coping with a family tragedy and the importance of a reinforced family during tough times, its fantastic comedy and wonderful use of 3D during action sequences. It’s a damn shame the story is highly predictable (Burnish’s mind-changing arc was too damn obvious) and its lead actress delivering a mediocre performance as its main character. I still highly recommend it, and stay for the end credits for a whooping surprise!
✯✯✯✯
