SMALLFOOT: Hyperactive Animated Fable Is Strictly For Kids

When it comes to animated movies, there are those clever enough to appeal to a wide audience and there are many that serve as entertainment for just the youngest of viewers. Warner Animation’s Smallfoot, the tale of a Yeti who exposes the truth about his world, falls unambiguously into the latter category. Despite its already infamous online cred, sparked by the oddly comedic “Zendaya is Meechee” viral video, this bright and bubbly film will likely only be enjoyed by the elementary school set.

I say this not because Smallfoot is thematically empty or excessively juvenile, but because it’s just difficult to imagine any adults appreciating something this relentlessly frantic. Sure, producers Phil Lord and Chris Miller made their mark by adopting a joke-a-minute style, but it takes a particularly careful skill set to pull off such an ambitious balancing act. Most of the time, things just end up feeling hyperactive and maddening.

That’s certainly the case with Smallfoot, which is desperate to entertain its audience with musical numbers, visual gags, and rapid-fire dialogue without paying that same attention to character or stakes. It never lets up, and most kids will enjoy it because of that boundless energy. Still, this over-caffeinated spectacle is both patently ridiculous and oddly unfulfilling, content to approach weighty themes without the dramatic gravitas they deserve. It’s a whole lot of running around with nothing to show for it. And while I can’t speak for everyone, I found this to be a patience-testing viewing experience, albeit one with a few unintentional laughs to provide some semblance of comfort.

Yetis & Humans Collide For The First Time

Channing Tatum plays Migo, who might just be one of the dullest animated leads I’ve seen in forever. Putting that aside, Migo and his Yeti friends live on a giant mountain, which is held up by a group of woolly mammoths – or at least that’s what they’ve been told. Everything in this village is done to maintain order, resulting in a collectivist utopia built on a foundation of blissful ignorance.

The head of the village is the Stonekeeper (Common), who keeps everything under control by referring to a set of mystical stones that describes everything in the world. Migo is the son of Dorgle (Danny DeVito), the man responsible for ringing the gong at the start of each new day. Dorgle is reaching the end of his time as the gong-ringer, which means Migo is on deck for the job. During a test run, the young Yeti flies well past his target, landing in the snow on the side of the mountain. Here, he finds something he didn’t think existed: a Smallfoot.

If you’re wondering what a Smallfoot is, it’s just a human. Bigfoot, Smallfoot – you get the idea. Yetis have no concept of people, so there’s a whole mythology around these creatures. When Migo returns to the village, the Stonekeeper rejects his findings, since the stones clearly don’t identify any such animal. Temporarily banished from his home, Migo is brought in by the Smallfoot Evidentiary Society, run by Meechee (Zendaya), the Stonekeeper’s daughter. Along with village outsiders Gwanghi (LeBron James), Kolka (Gina Rodriguez), and Fleem (Ely Henry), Meechee is always looking for any proof she can find of the existence of these creatures.

When Migo informs them that the Smallfoot he saw jumped off the mountain and went down, the SES hatches a risky plot to send the banished Yeti down to a world they’ve been told doesn’t exist. Here, Migo crosses the path of Percy Patterson (James Corden), a down-on-his-luck nature TV host looking for the next big discovery. I’m sure you can guess where this goes from here. Even though they can’t understand each other, Migo and Percy take a wild journey to discover bold new worlds. Along the way, they’ll find the truth about why humans and Yetis have been separated for centuries.

Ambitious World-Building Saddled With Flat Material

There’s no denying that Smallfoot is boilerplate kid stuff, but I have to admire the film’s somewhat outrageous sense of ambition. Director Karey Kirkpatrick and the myriad of writers involved with this story managed to create a whole mythology in the world of the Yetis, elaborating on this cultural divide between ancient creatures and malevolent humans with the utmost seriousness. Which, in the context of a children’s movie, is kind of hilarious. And as if that weren’t enough, Smallfoot has the guts to throw in a bunch of musical numbers. Including one where Common raps about the history of Yetis. I am 100% serious.

In a way, there’s a risky sense of lunacy at the heart of this project. Yet at the same time, the wildness of Smallfoot kind of feels like a facade. Let’s take the musical numbers, for example. With the exception of a few select Disney movies, it’s true that the animated musical comedy is something of a rarity. But beyond Common‘s Yeti rap history lesson and (seriously) James Corden‘s karaoke twist on “Under Pressure,” every song here sounds the same. It’s an assortment of corporate pop anthems, making a defining feature of the film feel unmistakably generic. Then again, I said the same thing about The Greatest Showman, so what do I know.

Smallfoot is also just a kid-friendly version of Sausage Party. Before you exit the page, let me describe a story for you. A young hero lives in a happy society where everyone plays their part and trusts in the rules provided for them, only for his world to be exposed as a lie when he realizes the awful truth about humans and the lies created to prop up this utopia. Hint: it’s the plot of both movies. In the context of a Seth Rogen movie about religion and sexually active food, this unconventional twist on the hero’s journey felt appropriate. Here, it’s half-baked and underdeveloped, with a mandatory happy ending undermining the whole thing.

Frantic Pacing Undermines Story

Still, the generic familiarity of the whole endeavor is expected in some ways. After all, this is the case with a number of animated films. What’s more difficult to accept is the sheer relentlessness of the film, the inability to let things develop or simmer for even the briefest of moments. This is going to make me sound like a cranky old man (I promise I like fun things), but this movie’s pacing made me go numb almost instantly.

From the very first scene, something is always happening. There’s always singing or dancing or running around or yelling or bickering, a mind-numbing onslaught of visual and narrative chaos. The film takes no time to set up its story, rushing through every bit of exposition without a care in the world. Usually that’s not a bad thing, but it comes back to haunt the film later. When there’s no time for even a brief moment of grounded emotion, where does that leave the film?

While the voice cast is admirable, these characters are, quite frankly, a mess. In fact, I would argue that Percy Patterson is the only one who undergoes a real arc. The character of Migo bugs me the most. Voiced with a sort of dopey obliviousness by Channing Tatum, our lead hero undergoes maybe the quickest transition from ignorance to enlightenment in cinematic history. In the first scene, Migo is proudly regurgitating the village propaganda, even telling a group of kids to push down all of their questions. Five minutes later, he’s utterly convinced that his world is a lie. How does that possibly make sense?

Smallfoot: Conclusion

Look, I know I’m asking too much of a movie that is designed to entertain kindergartners. But if you’re an adult tasked with sitting through this lively and tiresome journey, I think all of the above information is pertinent.

Now, adults can still probably enjoy this in an ironic way. Smallfoot is so unbelievable at times that I couldn’t help but feel baffled and perplexed by the creative decisions on display, laughing and shaking my head as it ventured into some strange directions. Sure, I’ll concede that the ability to chuckle at Smallfoot‘s weird follies is no substitute for a really strong animated movie. But if you’re facing down a trip to the land of the Yetis, at least you might find something to admire.

What did you think of Smallfoot? What’s your favorite recent animated movie? Let us know in the comments below!

Smallfoot was released in US theaters on September 28, 2018 and in the UK on October 12, 2018. For full international release information, click here.