Also rented (after missing it… but not REALLY missing it… at the theater) the kids animated click Smallfoot. I fully admit to expecting to hate this silly looking film with a terrible trailer… but in the middle of hate-watching it, I kind of started to appreciate it. Go figure.

Smallfoot is about a clan of yetis living above the clouds in the Himalayas. They believe their mountain top is all that exists and is held up by four mammoths (and it’s mammoths all the way down). One day, our hero yeti stumbles upon the mythical smallfoot… a human… and then realizes there’s a whole world below the cloud layer.

This movie is only marginally funny bordering sometimes on cringy. The animation is only ok and the art style and the character models lack creativity. There’s a lot of puffy headed nonsense logic at the start of the film too… but then the story finally really kicks in and things start to make sense and get interesting.

Before you know it, this dumb kids film is full of government conspiracies, lies, deception, and the struggle between the truth and the delusions we tell ourselves so we can live a comfortable life. It teaches kids to not obey blindly and, hey, religious-minded parents might not appreciate the flick teaching their kids that, just because its written down somewhere, doesn’t mean it’s the truth. Of course, I say that’s a good thing and really makes this movie about a hundred notches better than the usual “family and friendship is all that matters” platitudes from most animated films (no matter how good – and often better than this film – they are).

If only the rest of the movie was as good but I think the surprisingly inventive turn it takes makes up for a lot – not all – of the rest of the film’s shortcomings. This is hardly a perfect film and your appreciation of it might depend on how authoritarian you live your life and teach your kids.

Score: 75