Abominable

I didn't expect to get much out of Abominable, beyond the most basic "the kids want to go see a movie and this is one", but in fact I really liked it. Much more of a "How To Train Your Dragon" than a "Wonder Park", which I guess might be the Dreamworks touch or something: gorgeous animation and some truly magical scenes, simple but solid plot that lands all its character beats, refreshing Chinese settings and cast. I guess the Kung Fu Panda series also have romanticised-past-Chinese settings, but it was nice to see a) modern China b) human characters. I have to admit I didn't recognize the initial city as Shanghai because I don't know the Shanghai skyline despite it being super distinctive, but, like, just being able to take my kids to a kids movie that's showing a city with the signage in Chinese, and the cute, not-Disney-generic character designs - I really like the idea that we can see more in kids movies than the standard generic American suburb and American city. I guess we get that because Dreamworks is doing this ongoing collaboration with a Chinese studio, so there's more China-set animation in the pipeline, but isn't going to translate into movies set in *other* non-American settings unless Dreamworks decides to develop another one of these partnerships with an Indian studio or something (I'm just trying to think of countries with large film industries here... Nigeria? would love a cute Nigerian adventure movie). But, anyways, Abominable was good, worth seeing for fans of HTTYD. Content notes for dead parent angst and animal harm (yeti is being hunted by the bad guys).