Critics’ Review: ‘Abominable’ Scores on the Lost and Found Theme

Here’s what the critics have to say about the film.

Movie name: Abominable
Director: Jill Culton
Cast: Computer animated film with voices of Chloe Bennet, Albert Tsai, Tenzing Norgay Trainor, Eddie Izzard, Sarah Paulson, Tsai Chin, and Michelle Wong

Here’s what the critics have to say:

“Abominable has a checklist of moral lessons it aims to impart: love your family, take fewer selfies and play the violin (a gift bequeathed by Yi’s dad). In the film’s most moving scene, Yi plays a solo so powerful it summons rain, flowers, and the Coldplay hit “Fix You.” It’s a fascinating musical mashup that starts with a Christian-style organ playing over the image of a famous Buddhist religious site that gives way to a pop mega-hit. For an aspiring blockbuster, that culture clash is the cash-grab holy trinity. That Culton might eke out a tear is a bonus.”

Amy Nicholson, Variety

“The biggest emotional pull, however, is the lost and found theme itself. In taking a yeti back home, a youngster lost to the world, because of an unresolved grief, manages to reconnect with and home in on herself and the world around her. Healing is all: be it a broken heart or the strings of a violin. The heart has to keep singing, the violin has to play on. Nothing can be more feel good and heart-warming than that when it comes to a family film, that too in the festive season.”

Namrata Joshi, The Hindu

“Abominable is an exceptionally watchable and amiable animated tale written and directed by Jill Culton. Its opening scene is like that of a first-person video game. From the point of view of something in captivity, we, the audience, break free, bouncing out of a cell and into a lab, where a red-haired female scientist informs us, in a plummy British accent, that we really ought not to be out and about.”

Glenn Kenny, The New York Times

“Perhaps DreamWorks didn’t want to take too many risks with this first major cross-cultural venture with China, employing a cast that includes both Asian and Caucasian actors and a story that can be enjoyed by kids anywhere who like their movies to be fully huggable. If the result often feels like a compromise, it’s a well-rendered compromise that impresses in its scale and colorful flights of fancy, as well as in its awesome eagerness to please.”

Jordan Mintzer, Hollywood Reporter