A Yeti Adventure Parent Guide

Simon Picard (Noel Fisher) is a young anthropologist with a dream: to prove the existence of the fabled Yeti. By chance, he crosses paths with a fearless private detective, Nelly Maloye (Rachelle Lefevre), who encourages him to take a chance and chase his dream. Funded by a fame seeking benefactor, Simon and Nelly set out for the Himalayas and begin the adventure of a lifetime.

I, like most people, enjoy a good old fashioned adventure flick, especially ones involving a hunt for a lost city/creature/artifact. Unfortunately for me, and perhaps for you, A Yeti Adventure does not live up to the promise of the genre. This movie commits the cardinal sin of the adventure genre: it’s boring. My four-year-old watched it with me and he said he only liked one part (the scary part) and not the rest of it. If a four-year-old isn’t interested, I can’t imagine that anyone else would be either.

The CGI is bad, but that’s to be expected for a production of this size. Aside from that, the characters are as flat as can be. No one really learns or grows, or even has personality outside of simple tropes. The anthropologist is nerdy and cautious, the detective is brash and fearless, and their Sherpa guide is wise and calm, which also leans into Asian stereotypes. I’m not entirely sure what the overall message is supposed to be, aside from a brief environmental message that feels like it was shoehorned in at the last minute. I also suspect that the production team didn’t do any research at all. The first scene says that the setting is 1956, but then characters wear modern clothing and there are multiple obvious anachronisms. I guess they wanted the proof of the yeti to be on film rather than digital, but if you’re going to set a story in the past at least put some effort into it.

A Yeti Adventure is clean in all areas except violence. However, there are a few things I’d like to note in that area. At one point a dead human body is seen on screen for an extended moment and in relative detail. This could be distressing for young children, as it is obvious the body has been there for a long time. There is also a scene in which a character hallucinates being terrorized by mountain spirits in the form of disembodied mask faces. The visuals and sound are surprisingly scary, and they culminate in a jump scare that even made me flinch. For those reasons, I can’t recommend this film for the very young, and I suspect that kids old enough to not get scared wouldn’t be interested in viewing this movie anyway.