It seems silly to assign a positive morality to a company in this day and age–or, you know, ever–but Laika has truly seemed to be a source for good in the world. From “Coraline” to “Kubo and the Two Strings,” their stop-motion features are wildly creative and weird, stemming the tide against the endless sequels we see elsewhere in the animation game, even though original ideas and executions are less dependable sources of cash. (I see you, “Cars 3,” “Incredibles 2,” and “Toy Story 4.”) Laika’s films themselves espouse themes of courage and kindness to their young audiences, but they don’t feel didactic. Even if you could ignore their stop-motion animation, Laika films are immediately identifiable by their oddball aesthetic and approach to the world. But while their latest movie is always entertaining and visually on par with most of their previous offerings, “Missing Link” doesn’t have the big, bizarre ideas that have characterized the studio’s best work and set them apart from the other animation houses in the past.
While ‘Kubo’ and “The Boxtrolls” are unique movies, “Missing Link” isn’t even the only recent film set among the yetis. “Missing Link” doesn’t follow the same beats as last year’s “Smallfoot,” but Laika movies have previously been so weird that we were unlikely to see anything resembling an “Armageddon“/”Deep Impact” situation. For this film, we’re introduced to Victorian-era cryptozoologist Sir Lionel Frost (voiced by Hugh Jackman), who is desperate for the approval of his adventurer peers in London. After a mission to prove the existence of the Loch Ness Monster goes wrong, he receives a letter sent from Washington state, promising to deliver him proof of the Sasquatch, and he gamely makes the cross-Atlantic and then cross-country journey.
Once in the Pacific Northwest, he meets genial Mr. Link (voiced by Zach Galifianakis), a lonely Bigfoot who just wants to find others of his kind. Joined by Adelina Fortnight (voiced by Zoe Saldana), the mismatched pair travel to the Himalayas, where they hope to find the yetis, who Mr. Link sees as his cousins and his best chance for companionship. But the old guard of gentlemen adventurers (led by Stephen Fry as Lord Piggot-Dunceby) don’t want him to succeed, so they set the dastardly Williard Stenk (voiced by Timothy Olyphant) on their tail.
Likely to the disappointment of some, “Missing Link” is progressive in its politics, challenging both isolationism and refusal to change, as well as championing actual evolution, as made clear in its title. Its old-school villain Lord Piggot-Dunceby even sneers, “These are dark days. Electricity. Suffrage. Evolution.” It offers these positions as so outdated, even over a century ago, that believing otherwise is the only intelligent alternative. But the characterization of Saldana’s Adelina feels like by-the-numbers feminism, and her existence here seems only to be to satisfy those who want a female character in the film. She could have been easily excised from the plot without losing much at all.
Written and directed by Chris Butler (Laika’s “ParaNorman“), “Missing Link” is sweet and silly, sure to evoke laughs from both kids and adults alike. There are some fun jokes that only adults will get, and the young–and immature-at-heart–will giggle over its poop gags. It has some of the darkness that has characterized previous Laika films, refusing to fully sanitize its world for kids. But in addition to never reaching the overall weirdness levels of other films from the animation company, it doesn’t offer the rich world-building we’ve seen elsewhere from Laika. It boasts 110 sets and 65 distinct locations, which is impressive from a production standpoint, but it means that we never really get to know any of those spots well. When it does stop and breathe for a minute–notably in a Washington town that doesn’t feel far from “McCabe and Mrs. Miller” territory in its dirty, sooty depiction of frontier life–we get a glimpse of a film that might have taken a bit more time to tell its story, much to its own benefit. It’s all a little too rushed, packing too much travel and story into what has to be a kid-friendly runtime.
Those sets, as well as the character and background design, are as gorgeously animated as fans have come to expect from Laika. There’s impressive detail, down to the stitching on Sir Lionel Frost’s leather gloves, that brings a wonderful texture to the film that is rarely present even in the best computer animated films. Later scenes in the Himalayas do impressive work with ice, and you can almost taste the bitter, biting cold of the thin air. But the film’s plot and characters never reach those heights, leaving the animation feeling a little hollow.
“Missing Link” isn’t a bad film when compared to most kids animated movies, but it falls so far short compared to its Laika peers. This never feels like a film that will truly ignite a child’s imagination the way “Coraline” and ‘Kubo’ might, with its more standard story and setting than we’ve seen previously from them. “Missing Link” is a fun, if uneventful and uninspired, trip, but at least it won’t annoy the parents who are along for its fast-paced ride. [B-]