And, of course, the intermingling of cultures
— like in Lulu Wang’s lovely and heartfelt “The
Farewell,” released earlier this year — often fuels
brilliant, border-straddling tales.
But “Abominable,” about a girl who discovers a
yeti on the rooftop of her Shanghai apartment
building, is so safe, so risk-free, so bland, that its
business imperatives are never just off-screen.
Writer-director Jill Culton (a writer on
“Monsters, Inc.” and director of “Open Season”),
who co-directed “Abominable” with Todd
Wilderman, opens her film, like the Humphry
Bogart thriller “Dark Passage,” with an escape
shot from a first-person perspective. A young
yeti — picture a giant, furry Maltese — gets
loose from the wealthy collector of rare animals
(Eddie Izzard).
Lured by a billboard for Mt. Everest, he hides
himself on nearby rooftop. He’s soon found
by Yi (Chloe Bennet), a “self-proclaimed loner”
teenager living below with her mother (Michelle
Wong) and her diminutive but fiery grandmother
(Tsai Chin). Since losing her father, Yi has thrown
herself into an assortment of unpleasant jobs,
trying to save money to make the trip across
China she and her dad talked about.
The familial scenes are warm but fleeting.
Before long Yi, along with a couple of
neighboring pals — Jin (Tenzing Norgay
Trainor, whose grandfather Tenzing Norgay
summited Everest with Edmund Hillary) and
Peng (Albert Tsai) — take off with the yeti they
nickname Everest, with pursuers close behind
(including a red-haired zoologist voiced by
Sarah Paulson), as they try to get their furry
friend back to his home in the Himalayas.