Review of Smallfoot (2018) by Ahmedaiman1999 — 30 Dec 2018

The main message is surprisingly refreshing, well-set, quite important, and above all, could appeal to and resonate with everyone whatever how old is he/she.

An issue I had with Pixar's Oscar-winner, Coco is that it has too many secondary messages that besides they were ridiculously excessive, they were intrusive, confusing that made me not even sure what the main moral was, heavy-handed, and completely unnecessary to the main plot. Fortunately, It's not totally the same case here. Of course, the other minor messages and lessons that are conveyed throughout the movie can feel redundant and annoyingly in-your-face, but the good thing is that they are never distracting nor unnecessary. They are justified either by the connection to the characters' arcs, or by the fact the every sub-plot lead to the other finely. In doing so, the main message has never been overshadowed, and was predominant at all parts of the movie.

Yes, the movie is literally split to a number of parts. But, alas, almost every part consists of a totally familiar, and infuriatingly predictable story that you can easily see how it will end a million miles away. Honestly, you can even readily predict the decisions the characters will make, nay the lines the characters will say!

The humor lacks originality just as the story does. This actually added insult to injury, because when I tried to pass over the fact I know how this plotline will end, I found myself watching some insufferably boring, and utterly bland and uninspiring visual gags that are just not funny. The Jokes in general in this movie are pretty lame. I didn't had a single laugh throughout the entire runtime of the movie, but I smiled a couple of times, to be honest.

So, it's clear that there are a lot of "I've seen this before" moments in this movie, and that shouldn't be surprising, for most of animated movies nowadays have this problem. But Smallfoot didn't settle on one generic story due to the episodic structure it has, and that's what amplified the feeling of familiarity, and made the clichés blatantly noticeable. But even the majority of the songs are totally unremarkable, and some of them are badly placed and feel interruptive, but all the songs are by no means bad. Actually, they are all good!

As much as I found the first fifty minutes of the movie kinda dull due to the formulaic storylines as I mentioned above, especially the first act which was moving in a most predictable pattern that even its absurdly fast pace couldn't save it from not being boring, there were some twists and turns that happened at the beginning of the third act that really elevated the whole movie. I won't say the new path the movie took after these twists, especially the major one, wasn't familiar. But the good thing is that it's not predictable. And I really mean that I finally didn't know how the movie would end, and I think that's the most important thing. Not to mention that I was really intrigued, and really excited to know what the characters would decide, what they would do next, and how the things would turn out. And surprisingly the movie kept surprising me till the very end.

The movie is filled with eye-popping colorful slapstick sequences that are just delightful to watch. The quality of the animation is top-notch, and the landscapes and the snow are simply dazzling. Let alone the well-designed characters.

The voice cast is solid, if not extraordinary by any means. I liked James Corden as the "Smallfoot", Percy, though. But it's Danny DeVito's vocal performance as Dorgle, Migo's dad, that I found quite unique and uncanny. Channing Tatum is fine as Migo, and the same goes with Zendaya as Meechee.

Smallfoot is so not nothingness, it's definitely somethingness! But I wish the story was as original as its message, and I wish the humor was as good as its animation.