It’s hard competing with Disney in the animation game. It’s hard competing with Disney just in general right now, due to how much media is dangerously being consumed into the House of Mouse on a regular basis; but rivalling them at the form they invented has always been a heavy task. Which is why it was so refreshing when DreamWorks launched in the mid-90s and out of the gate became the first company to meaningfully challenge Disney since Don Bluth’s string of classics in the 80’s. And while DreamWorks has always had its share of duds (largely due to Jeffrey Katzenberg aping whatever Disney was doing whenever he could), and came to rely far too much on the Shrek formula of pop culture-obsessed, Zeitgeist chasing obnoxiousness, it has contributed the Kung Fu Panda and How to Train Your Dragon series to the great animation canon, not to mention of course its fantastic early run of traditionally animated films, including the extraordinary Prince of Egypt. But it’s been a long time since they’ve produced an original film of much quality, falling largely into the same safe conveyor belt, hyper-consumerist monotony of Blue Sky, Illumination, and Sony.
I won’t lie, a large part of what drew me to Abominable was how the marketing suggested it might be the first half-decent new DreamWorks movie (not counting sequels to the aforementioned properties), since, I don’t know, Mr. Peabody & Sherman. Setting aside that it’s the third animated movie in a year about a yeti, there was an adventurous spirit and a welcome restraint of the typical DreamWorks conventions present in the advertising. It's directed by Jill Culton, a groundbreaker in animated film, and it was starring a cast of young Chinese characters voiced by young Chinese-American talent. With all this going for it, I was tentative, but I really wanted to like Abominable.
Once in a while I did. But all too often this is a film that substitutes the organic for the obligatory. Every character detail, every thematic beat, every bit of exposition is in service of the formula narrative and emotional goal, without much of the effort that went into earning those endpoints in greater films this one’s trying to emanate. Specifically, Abominable so badly wants to be How to Train Your Dragon, and you can see this in the titular yeti, called Everest, whose naive nature and expressiveness heavily echoes the dragon Toothless of those films (he even has the same tongue-hanging habit), and the awkward loner dynamic that endears the youth (Yi, voiced by Chloe Bennett) to the other. But where How to Train Your Dragon worked to develop that core relationship, Abominable induces it half-heartedly; where the former film coupled that growth and the burgeoning wonder of the dragon with a contextualization of the village-ingrained prejudices designed to further reinforce that bond, this one permits only shallow motivations for its aggressors and a surprisingly marginal relationship between girl and beast.
It’s more distant, that companionship, than in most kid and their pet narratives, and I get the intent to present the yeti as more of a vessel for Yi to live out her wanderlust and reconcile the death of her father (lazy character details that show no ambition), than as an animal for her to befriend; but it leaves her with a foot inside two personal story threads the film has no desire to wholly commit to. The result is an evolution that for both characters consists of merely the milestones without any meat, the familiar beats robbed of substance and any modicum of weight, capped off by a moralizing note that has little if any set-up.
Those individual milestones though aren’t all bad; a few of them in fact are quite aptly executed. While the animation in its more caricature instances and comedic excesses isn’t all that different from any other contemporary CG family film, more often than not it is refreshingly nice and elegant, moreso even than some Disney-Pixar films of late, and it definitely shines in a few key scenes. Any time Yi plays her violin for example, a keepsake of her father, the moment is magical -the combined visuals, music, and pace creating a sweet mood and encompassing emotional tether almost as captivating Song of the Sea or Kubo and the Two Strings -and I wish the rest of the movie could be more like it. A couple other sincere instances, a heart-to-heart conversation here and there, where the movie actually takes a breath, unconcerned with its laundry list of directives, do hint at something greater; at the shadow of fully realized characters or a meaningful journey, to be subsequently bogged down by the limitations of the script or else undercut by montage transitions set to an uncharacteristic song choice. This movie is clearly creative in its gorgeous environments, a number of its wild set-pieces, and even makes its largely Westernized China charming.
Perhaps the mistake lies in prioritizing the humour, the weakest component of most individual scenes. Often it doesn’t naturally coalesce with what should be a relatively earnest story, causing me to suspect studio mandate, and more often it’s just not at all funny. With the exception of Eddie Izzard (who can make anything funny) as the wealthy collector, and some of the jokes revolving around the uptight Jin (Tenzing Norgay Trainor), one of Yi’s companions, it’s mostly easy humour of the ground-down variety to be found in any kids’ movie conceived by adults who think they know what kids find funny.
Abominable certainly has merits over most of the non-Disney animated movies of 2019 -if nothing else it looks way better than any since Toy Story 4. But it’s a movie that never misses an opportunity to avoid resonating on more than a surface level. It takes none of the steps needed to endear the feelings and personalities of the characters or to convey a sense of genuine tension, despite its occasional moments of greatness. And that makes it a particularly frustrating movie, knowing how close it comes to being what it aspires to. What’s worse is it’s easy to see how Abominable could have been good because Missing Link came out earlier this year, also about a yeti, also chronicling a journey to return him home, also quite visually stunning, and also with core themes of family and belonging. And that film was seamlessly everything this one could have been. If DreamWorks would produce films like that rather than Trolls sequels and cheap spin-off series, it might be worth all the effort they put into chasing their previous successes.
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