Corpulent rocker Meat Loaf (Wayne’s World) stars as Mr. Big Jake Grizzly in the Canada-lensed, kid-friendly comedy, To Catch a Yeti. Big Jake and his donut-dreaming sidekick, Blubber (Richard Howland, TV’s Lost Girl), attempt to catch a yeti. ’Tis a noble pursuit.
Eschewing the true definition of a yeti, the film gives us not an abominable snowman or a super-sized cryptid, but an abomination of a puppet: a furry, rat-tailed, buck-toothed gnome who giggles like a hyena that somehow survived being hit by a BFGoodrich tire.
Escaping Big Jake’s sweat-mitted clutches, this so-called yeti seeks refuge in the backpack of a hiker who unknowingly brings the little scamp home. The hiker sticks the thing in the fridge, feeds it frankfurters and calls him Hank. The scene in which Hank discovers toothpaste may be the most pornographic thing you will see outside of pornography.
Without fail, the man’s precocious daughter, Amy (Chantallese Kent), quickly loves Hank like she would any other mutated, decidedly unvaccinated creature brought home by her parents, so it’s only a matter of time before Big Jake and Blubber chase her and Hank all over town. Unfortunately, at film’s end, the yeti is released into the wild, not drawn and quartered. Given a scene depicting little Amy and Hank sharing a bed, I will not write off the possibility of the legacy sequel, To Birth a Yeti. —Rod Lott