acid reflects

Did not expect this to be a smart, funny and entertaining parable for our fake news times. And the songs deserve to be performed in a Broadway musical. Don’t be fooled by the trailer’s lack of personality – this is worthy enough to plod through light snow on the way to the cinemas.

Smallfoot
Directed by Karey Kirkpatrick, Jason Reisig
Based on the book Yeti Tracks by Sergio Pablos

When I first saw the trailer, I wondered why the Yeti myth was being explored by this animation. Of the many creatures that can be made into cuddly plush toys, I wondered why yeti was chosen. Of course it made sense after seeing the film.

If anything stands out from Smallfoot, they are the songs and the timely message.

Images from Warner Brothers Pictures

Migo (Chaning Tatum) is your average happy yeti living contentedly in happy yeti village isolated from the rest of the world somewhere above the Himalayas. But the town’s keeper of tradition and wisdom, Stonekeeper (Common) banishes Migo from the village after the young yeti insists that he saw the mythical smallfoot (human) outside the village.

A group of Migo’s peers who believe in the existence of smallfeet, led by Stonekeeper’s daughter Meechee (Zendaya,) hatches a covert plan for Migo to venture below the clouds to find conclusive proof of the smallfoot.

Migo lands near a human town where he sights Percy (James Corden,) an opportunistic ex-reporter out to record a fake yeti sighting. The duo develops an unusual bond after untangling themselves from an accident, and Percy agrees to be taken to yeti town.

Fact and fiction collide when Migo and friends present Percy to the rest of the yeti community, and Stonekeeper convinces the villagers that Percy is a small form of a yak. Taking Migo into a secret chamber, Stonekeeper reveals the true reason why the smallfeet are hidden from the villagers. Meanwhile. the high altitude makes it difficult for Percy to breathe. Meechee surreptitiously takes Percy down the mountain, but also obviously because she wants to see the smallfeet world herself. East is East and West is West, as the saying goes.

Migo and Percy’s characters are interesting contrasts who both undergo a transformative arch after seeing each other’s worlds. The audience follows Migo’s journey from devout follower of the yeti’s beliefs to one who accepts change after he is exposed to realities beyond the village’s walls. The film repeats this message of questioning public conventions like superstition when these are refuted by factual evidence. In non-specific and sometimes amusing ways, the animation makes a (light) case for speaking truth to power in the face of blatant lies.

This truth vs fiction struggle is also woven into the lyrics of the songs that are played in the film. “Perfection” by Channing Tatum and “Wonderful Life” by Zendaya are equally joyous and effervescent – the first being a full orchestral opening “Bon Jour” that wakes up to the reveal of the yeti village, while Zendaya’s song is a motivational pop arrangement. Common’s rap preacher song “Let It Lie” should be performed live on a stage with a gospel choir and full production. Written by the Kirkpatrick brothers, its lyrics speak of the horrors of truth and the bliss of ignorance. While it may not be as sharp as Tim Rice’s words in “Be Prepared” from The Lion King, Common’s delivery magnified by the music by Heitor Pereira elevates “Let It Lie” almost to that iconic level that makes a song a part of the film’s identity. Almost no surprise since Karey Kirkpatrick and his brother Wayne have background in musicals, having earned Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle nominations for their collaboration in the hit Broadway musical comedy “Something Rotten!” in 2015.

It also makes sense that the film’s truth message is within cryptozoological milieu. Percy is a great character to explore the weight of half-truths (short of making this a boy-who-cries-wolf disaster film.) I can only imagine the uproar the setting may have caused had the story taken place in a remote island off the Pacific featuring an isolated superstitious tribe. Fortunately, Smallfoot never crosses over to the dark side and keeps everything zippy. I also like how the movie gives its characters some room to shift (or grow, or arch – however you may want to put it) that there are no set caricatures of good and bad/ hero vs villain cliches.

However, as much as I liked its timely message and the show-stopping songs, the movie stops there. Stripped of its timely message, the plot is not exactly exciting even if the double fish-out-of-water scenarios are a goldmine of opportunities to drop punchlines – which the movie accomplishes satisfactorily.

Fur, hair and water appear often in CG animation because they are among the most difficult to render realistically. They look okay in the film, but maybe my blurry sight failed to see anything groundbreaking (or at least attempted to) to generate an indelible image that usually stands between a memorable versus run-of-the-mill animation. While the movie musically opens in spectacular fashion, it goes predictably downhill from the chase scene onwards and ends on a mild note (the Pacman shot was amusing, though.)

Ultimately, Smallfoot is an audibly pleasant surprise, despite the middling animation. While it does not accomplish anything artistic in leaps and bounds, it does try treading lightly on its own confident path with catchy tunes a relevant message for all – big person or small.