Title: Smallfoot
Directed by: Karey Kirkpatrick and Jason Reisig
Written by: Karey Kirkpatrick and Clare Sera
Featuring the voices of: Channing Tatum and Zendaya
Classification: PG; 96 minutes
Zendaya attends the premiere of Smallfoot earlier this month.Jesse Grant/Getty Images
There’s a reason you still hear thirtysomething adults belting out songs from The Little Mermaid or The Lion King every karaoke night: An animated musical ought to have memorable music. While Disney is well aware of that, Smallfoot, the first musical by Warner Animation Group, won’t inspire any late-night anthems a decade or two from now.
Performances by the film’s stars, Channing Tatum, Zendaya, Common and James Corden, are fine enough, but the music isn’t nearly as polished as Disney films, or even Warner Animation Group’s first film The Lego Movie. One tune by Corden is a riff on Queen’s Under Pressure, another a sing-talk rap by Common, neither catchy. The closing number, Finally Free, will probably see some radio time thanks to singer Niall Horan, but it’s no Be Our Guest.
If the story compensated for the lack of earworms, Smallfoot might be on better, er, footing. And yet …
Migo (Tatum) lives in a yeti community high in the mountains shrouded in clouds. One day, he lands outside the confines of the town and discovers a human (whose feet are, well, rather small). What follows is a fairly expected tale with easy metaphors (who is the real monster: yeti or man?) with a few cute twists along the way, including an ending where – spoiler alert – differences are settled and foes become friends.
Where Smallfoot shines, though, is – like Warner’s Looney Tunes and Animaniacs before it – its slapstick physical comedy. Pratfalls get the biggest laughs, with many characters falling off cliffs, getting squished between rocks or hit by tranquilizer darts. Another legitimately hilarious scene involves one character saving another from the wrath of a mamma bear whose husband has just gone into hibernation.
Unlike Disney’s output, which can be terrifying (who over there decided that every children’s movie stemmed from the heart-wrenching loss of a parent?), there’s not much conflict here, so Smallfoot might appeal to parents of the youngest audiences.
Smallfoot will likely land in the realm of co-director/writer Karey Kirkpatrick’s other animated films, such as Chicken Run and Over the Hedge: bouncy fun with a lesson for about an hour and a half that lingers about as long. Which might be a bonus to parents still reeling from watching Frozen for the two-hundredth time. One and done – no earworms necessary.
Smallfoot opens Sept. 28