Smallfoot is a weird animated movie from Warner Animation starring Channing Tatum, James Corden, Zendaya, Common, LeBron James, and Gina Rodriguez about a village of Yetis. The story begins with Migo (Tatum), a young member of the village who wants to follow in his father’s footsteps. First of all, it’s funny that this character is name Migo and the whole time I’m thinking about Quavo, Offset and Takeoff (The Migos), I was expecting to hear an adlib in the movie. In the Yeti village, they have rules given to them by Stonekeeper, the chief of the village. Young Migo ends up venturing outside of the village by mistake and seeing an airplane and a human being. Migo’s mind is blown by seeing the mythic “smallfoot” that they were told don’t exist. Migo goes back to the village and tells what he saw but has no proof so he’s banished from the village. Migo, thanks to his friend, hehe, trys helping him to find a smallfoot. Migo then ventures beyond his part of the mountain, seeing this whole world where humans live. This brings us to Percy Patterson (Corden), a down on his luck animal expert and TV personality trying to find a new way to get famous in the age of social media.
Percy and Migo’s world collide and Migo ends up taking Percy to his village which completely shakes up the Yetis’ world and what was told to them by the Stonekeeper. This is where the movie really starts to get to its point of telling kids, and adults as well, to question what those in power tell you and ask why. A lot of this movie is Migo wanting to know why things are the way they are, when he sees things that are different from that. I can see how that works with kids being told one thing by their parents and then what the world shows them. Some of the momentum of the story is slowed by the music. Most of the songs in the movie just aren’t needed and don’t add to the story. There are two really strong and enjoyable music scenes, one with Common which of course is more rap, and tells a key part of the story, then there’s a cute and fun remake of Queen’s Under Pressure by Corden’s character that’s very reminiscent of his stuff on the late-night show. Some of the real highs for me were technical aspects that most viewers won’t care about, like how they created the snow which looked soft and had that crunch that snow makes, along with the fantastic hair effects on the yetis. Overall the movie was cute, but it was not an amazing piece of film-making that we’ve come to expect from Pixar. It also wasn’t a ton of silly jokes like we get from the Illumination Entertainment team but it’s a good step forward for WAG after Storks.
