Oh how adorable a notion – A picture where Yeti’s refers to humans as “smallfoots” and views them as creatures reserved for tales. How do I compromise and grasp understanding of the other side? It is an invitation. Smallfoot, is in fact a rather politically incorrect musical and to stray even one bit from what early reviews suggest, this is not almost as boring as it seems.
Migo (Channing Tatum) is a fairly dull average yeh-teh (‘Yeti’) conforming to the laws of a nice little Yeh-teh village. The edicts of which are so primitive that they are etched on stones and you are going to be reminded again and again just in case you didn’t get the point the first time around with all the prop humor nonsense. He has no other dream except to take over his father’s (Dorgle, played by Danny Devito) profession and in the course of it hit a huge bell every day to get rid of the sky snail. Where could that have stopped? Making other people wear suppositions about the cover up of the Smallfoots theory.
Most of the time, children’s cinema has something to deal with either a quest for identity or a fear of the unfamiliar, but this one is particularly harsh. Something that many people may think doesn’t quite add up is quickly dismissed in the cheerful opening number “Perfection”, where the two are likened to believing in a “flat earther”. There’s no covering up the fact that genocide is as a villain twirling a mustache or making Migo almost commit horrendous crimes in service of the government’s falsehoods.
It makes no sense to even ask why the film was not promoted as a musical. The songs are good and self evidently integral to the story. Meeche, played by Zendaya, has a song with the message about the need to appreciate everything around one. Being featured in the parent – child relationshipbonding song, it did, however, seem very predictable, as basic as any other kooky pop song (Eagerly go. Have an experience. Discover the greatness of the earth). Instead it is a sudden positive pop recruitment song for anti populism encouraging people to stop being complacent with the information and facts they are spoon-fed by our present day government through media. The stonekeeper’s song addresses the troubles brought on by the fearmongering of the current administration and also explains why Common the not so best voice actor was hired for the role.
However, apart from the rather unexpected anti-establishment message, Smallfoot just so happened to be cute, as cute as the little sounds that the smallfoot made while talking to the Yetis. The design of the Yeti was nice and varied and despite being set amidst an exceedingly flat but somewhat snow capped mountain, the movie had nice use of colors and contrasts. Her voice acting is impressively decent except for the earlier mentioned Common blunder. Even the King’s Knees, Lebron James knows how to portray a character of a mad man in the village. Other than walking her through out the story, I don’t think anything else is very entertaining except for riling her up too much over the television with distressed sports fan.
The film, however, has one major flaw that nearly cost it all. There are some real attempts at humor throughout the movie, but one joke did not even make me smirk. Reubens being ‘open to creativity’ is one thing. Hearing this one words James Cordon using the word “clout” on a remix of Under Pressure is a sin. All the other jokes aimed at every millenial generation joke came off as reasonably strong thankfully otherwise this film would have been prone to all the other forced connectivity, what with the fashion heyday of that.
Despite its family-friendly animation, Smallfoot emerges as one of the most social and relevant films in today’s political culture. It gives kids and whatever adult is stuck taking them an important lesson: Laws can be helpful and gives a structure to people’ lives. However, if the law is unjust, it should not be followed. Instead, one should learn from the world instead of: fearing it, or there will only be countries with unjustalistic laws.
Watch Smallfoot on Kimcartoon
