Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Smallfoot (2018)

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 10-22-2018, 11:35 AM:

Smallfoot has a good comic premise: "Bigfoot" really exists (in fact, a whole village of them are living on a mountaintop above the clouds) and they have legends of a scary "smallfoot" creature, AKA humans, that they've never actually seen. They also are governed by a mysterious set of "stones" that keep them from knowing about the world beneath the mountaintop.

When curiosity gets the best of one of the young Yetis, causing evidence to surface that the "smallfoot" is real, the powers-that-be try to suppress the news, and convince everyone that there's no point in trying to get to know more about the "Smallfoots," or even acknowledge their existence, because everything has been working fine for centuries and to make any changes would just cause trouble.

In other words, it's a political message in favor of "disruption." Thanks, Hollywood... once again, kids can't go to the movies without being told they're expected to "change the world." Can't we let them become at least teenagers before saddling them with these great responsibilities?

All that said, "Smallfoot" is a fun story and told intelligently, with a few great one-liners and some extremely catchy songs, including a nice "Let It Go" wannabe that happens about 25 minutes in.

The other interesting thing is how the main Yeti character never is able to talk to the "Smallfoot" he eventually befriends; they try, but they just can't really communicate. Most movies would have cooked up some device in the middle of the story to allow them to talk to each other, but this movie avoids doing that, which was impressive (and probably caused a few arguments in story meetings).

There are a lot of callbacks to the Looney Tunes in the animation, specifically Wile E. Coyote and his travails in a memorable "cliff fall chain reaction" sequence.

The sound mix is kind of odd during the songs, burying the vocals too deep in the mix so you have to really concentrate to hear the lyrics. Other than that, the sound was good with some interesting use of the surround channels.

The voice cast is good, especially James Corden who basically plays himself, except he's running a human interest show instead of a talk show. He even gets a song to sing, based on Queen/Bowie's "Under Pressure." Normally I'd be opposed to a kids' movie appropriating a classic tune like this, but anything that helps erase the memory of "Ice Ice Baby" is OK by me.

LeBron James is surprisingly good as one of the supporting Yeti characters, and Channing Tatum is fine as well.

Overall I would rank this as a slightly above-average animated flick, nowhere near Disney quality, but lots better than the increasingly-annoying Lego or Ice Age sequels. 2.5 stars out of four for me.