After discovering a Yeti on the roof of her apartment building, teenage Yi and her two friends embark on an epic quest to reunite the magical creature with his family. But to do so, they must stay one step ahead of a wealthy financier and a determined zoologist who want to capture the beast for their own gain.
Abominable is created by DreamWorks and Pearl studios, making this an American and Chinese collaboration. Where the use of Chinese characters and locations is generally seen as pandering to Chinese audiences to try and boost box office numbers, a collaboration with a Chinese animation studio actually gives the film a sense of credibility, in sharing some aspects of Chinese culture and geography.
It goes without saying that the animation is beautiful. The rendering of the fur on our Yeti, Everest, is not overly detailed, but it looks incredibly lush and warm. Combine that with its pristine white colour and you have the perfect character to be adapted into a plushie nice and early before the Christmas rush. The film does lack some of the more elaborate set and character designs that you would expect from a Pixar film, but there is enough complexity and colour in the palette to keep the film visually interesting throughout.
The colour schemes are quite eye-catching, with each location having its own colour palette (there are actually some similarities with the other Yeti animated film to come out this year The Missing Link), progressively getting more and more natural and clean as the protagonists move further and further away from the city environment.
Despite some aesthetic similarities in character design, the target audience is noticeably younger than the audience for DreamWorks How To Train Your Dragon franchise, with a much simpler story that focuses on basic themes such as the importance of reconnecting with and supporting family, and the idea of appreciating the beauty of nature without owning or profiting from it. A straightforward story, with few character development moments.
The characters were rather one-dimensional but worked well for their roles in this 97-minute film, creating a good balance of positive and negative energy. The voice acting was perfectly fine from big names like Sarah Paulson, Chloe Bennet, and Eddie Izzard, with Paulson perhaps having the greatest impact. Something that made the film stand out, was the complete lack of vocal singing. Instead, focusing on the learning of a traditional orchestral instrument, the violin. A great choice with some very nice pieces of score that brought a lot of energy to the scenes, and complemented Everests deeply resonating rumblings.
There is a lot to like about the film. While there isn't anything in the way of mature humour to keep the parents overly excited, there is more than enough to keep the children happy. Nice comedic moments together with some visually appealing set environments, some organic character growth, and a nice moral to the story. There is no super deep story here (it certainly doesn't have the emotional impact that an early Pixar film does), but it is inoffensive, cute, fun, with some good music.