Missing Link
Directed by Chris Butler
Produced by Travis Knight & Arianne Sutner
Screenplay by Chris Butler
Starring Hugh Jackman, Zoe Saldana, Emma Thompson, Stephen Fry, David Walliams, Timothy Olyphant, Matt Lucas, Amrita Acharia, Zach Galifianakis
LAIKA studio is becoming a worthy rival to Pixar, Dreamworks and Disney in the realm of feature-length animated films. They debuted with Neil Gaiman’s Coraline, to universal acclaim, and went on to other critical successes, ParaNorman and The Boxtrolls. Given that their last effort was the outstanding Kubo and the Two Strings, expectations were high for Missing Link.
While it bombed badly at the box office, pulling in just $25 million (against a $100 million budget), it was a critical success and deserves much better reception than it got.
It’s an affable comedy about a 19th century English explorer (Hugh Jackman’s Sir Lionel Frost, somewhat modeled on Sherlock Holmes) who has fallen into disfavor with London’s Adventurers’ Club because of his pursuit of the bizarre and the unscientific, such as the Loch Ness monster, or a breed of early humans with huge feet, known in some circles as Bigfeet, but which he as dubbed with the unlikely name of “Sasquatch.”
In a wild opening sequence, he and his assistant (David Walliams, playing a rather obvious Watson) encounter Nessie, who is not amused to see them. In the ensuing misunderstanding Nessie smashes the camera, and the only eyewitness quits on him. Undaunted, he returns to the Club, where he confronts Lord Piggot-Dunceby, played deliriously by Stephen Fry, and swears to return with proof of an early, ape-like human. Piggot-Dunceby agrees to re-admit him to the club if he returns with such proof, but secretly plots to have Frost killed rather than risk the Lord’s fundamentalist certainties.
Frost travels to the American West, unaware of his would be assassin Willard Stenk, played by Timothy Olyphant, is following him.
Of course he finds a Sasquatch, who it turns out is fluent in English. He names the creature “Mister Link”, but eventually the Bigfoot speaks up and says he (I think it’s a he) wants to be known as “Susan.”
They link up with the grudging company of the widow of a partner Frost once had and go in search of Shangri-la, supposed home to a big colony of Sasquatch.
The animation has solid animation and art, but it is the personification and dialogue of the characters that really makes it shine. The exchanges are witty and real, with an agreeable amount of snark.
While it does have a moral (friendship is valuable, and why has no American animation ever thought of that before?) it doesn’t belabor the point, or get mawkish. It has the same endearing wit and humor that made Boxtrolls so much fun to watch.
Available on video now.