Parents' Guide to Abominable

This animated adventure is sweet and entertaining enough to keep viewers amused, and it shares a bit about Chinese culture and underlines the importance of family, friendship, and teamwork. Everest's story is reminiscent of several other films about kids/people who find, protect, and commune with an unusual animal/creature/alien, but the twist of setting the film in Shanghai provides a window into the universe of three Chinese kids. They live in a high-rise apartment building, can ride a motorbike, and know how to get around on their own -- just as you'd expect from teens in the most populated city in the world. Everest the yeti might be a mythical creature, but the teen characters don't just seem authentic --- they're all voiced by Asian actors or actors of Asian descent. (One bonus piece of trivia: Trainor, the voice of Jin, is the grandson of legendary climber Tenzing Norgay, who -- along with Sir Edmund Hillary -- was the first to summit Mt. Everest.)

Izzard's villain, Mr. Burnish, is reminiscent of Up's Charles F. Muntz. Burnish has been on a lifelong mission to prove that he did indeed see a yeti when he was a young explorer. But it's his shady head zoologist, Dr. Zara, who's more fascinating. Her interest in Everest proves even more Machiavellian than that of her boss. Everest isn't a musical, but it does include key musical moments, from Everest's supernatural chant to Yi's prodigy-level violin playing and climactic use of the Coldplay song "Fix You" (both as an instrumental and with lyrics). The movie's impressive animation and the deeper storyline should ultimately appeal to older tweens and teens as well as to younger viewers who are in it for the silly physical comedy.