By George Haerle

For The Daily World

You’d be right to go into “Smallfoot” with your children expecting a movie made mostly for them. It’s a family movie through and through, and with its Looney Tunes-style slapstick and a few chuckle-worthy jokes, adults should be at least mildly entertained through the brief 96-minute animated feature.

But they might be as surprised as this critic to notice the surprisingly valuable and much-needed lesson it teaches: Value your curiosity in the world, beware of dogma, think for yourself, seek the truth. But it does this with such a zany premise, it’s bizarrely more laughable outside the theater upon reflection.

Here’s the rundown: A yeti society lives on top of a large Himalayan mountain, a layer of clouds separating them from most of the mountain and everything else below. They live blissfully ignorant of any existence of anything below the clouds. Their beliefs and ideas about the world come from stones carved with their various history, lore, and rules, worn as a coat by the village leader and are considered undeniable truths.

When Migo (Channing Tatum) discovers a “smallfoot” (a human who quickly escapes once they meet for the first time), he tells the village of what he saw; but he is swiftly banished by the village elder. The belief in such a creature is banned because the dogmatic stones of yeti lore declare Smallfoot definitively nonexistent.

To prove he is right and return home, Migo sets out to bring back one of the creatures. This leads to a subplot with a small group of yetis, including the chief’s daughter (Zendaya), recruiting Migo to help them prove smallfoot exists. This leads to yet another subplot of a nature show host (James Corden) filming in the Himalayas who is (sort of) abducted by Migo to be taken back to his village. This whole 25-minute segment is just kind of “meh,” but it leads to a pretty great reveal once Migo returns to his village with the human in tow.

Now, adults probably won’t care about spoilers for a movie like this, but here’s your warning for the full scoop on how eyebrow-raising and bonkers (in a good way) this movie is.

As mentioned, the village chief (Common) wears a coat of stones chronicling yeti lore and indisputable rules literally written in stone, which could be representative of a religious perspective of the world and/or religious texts taken too literally. Denying any of said truths results in banishment.

And Migo is the son of a village gong-ringer (Danny DeVito), whose jobs are to painfully launch themselves headfirst into a gong every morning to signal the “sky snail” (the sun) that it is time to crawl across the sky. This is a pretty hilarious metaphor for thoughtlessly following the beliefs their priestlike leader has set for them.

Then, to make the symbolism even more loony, a great lie about the yeti society is revealed to Migo: Everyone’s daily tasks contribute to these falsehoods, powering a machine inside their mountain that generates the clouds separating them from the outside world. Their mindless clinging to outdated values — indeed, their entire economic structure — is literally fueling their isolation from the rest of the world. Holy moly, can you say relevance?

“Smallfoot” has a great message, an awesome original song (“Let It Lie” by Common) and a great voice cast. It’s worth checking out for the curious and open-minded, and the absolutely wacky delivery of its core themes will make for a fun family movie night.

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“Smallfoot” is currently playing at the Riverside Cinemas, 1017 S. Boone St. in Aberdeen.

George Haerle holds a bachelor’s degree in creative writing for media and lives in Cosmopolis.