Missing Link – a review

Sir Lionel Frost (Hugh Jackman) a crypto zoologist receives a letter from Bigfoot (Zach Galifianakis) himself. Together they go on a journey to find the hairy bloke’s family in the Himalaya’s. But, there are evil forces at play that want nothing better than to thwart the plans of our heroes every step of the way.

And Laika has done it again! With a stronger, more action driven story than their (almost perfect) last outing Kubo and the two strings, Missing Link delivers a wonderful odd-couple movie with a heart.

Normally Laika is troublesome to place because their movies often contain a certain amount of darkness (Coraline for instance). Missing Link, I would argue, breaks the mould a bit as it is more light-hearted than their previous outings.

This, because, the message of ‘family can be found in the oddest of places’ is played out exactly as it has been done numerous times before (e.g. The guardians of the galaxy, Lethal Weapon 4, or, even further back, the first rendition of The secret garden). But that shouldn’t spoil the fun.

So here I am about to embark on a lavish review in which I will most likely lose myself in praise. But before I do that, maybe a nitpick or two.

Picking the flees

Like Kubo before it the story of Missing Link is a bit back and forth. I call it the 'Pirates of the Caribbean-conundrum' since it was in that movie that I first noticed it. Basically the idea is that some movies tent to move all over the map. So in the first Pirates: the troupe goes back and forth to the treasure-cave. It’s this constant revisiting to places that the heroes willingly left that doesn’t always work.

Missing Link does this as well as the story takes us from London, towards Washington State U.S.A., back to London towards India (why not take a steamer at the west coast?). It doesn’t quite work on a narrative level.

Then there’s the character of Sir Frost who is also slightly amiss. He starts off as a swashbuckler adventurer who cares a great deal about the ones around him and then, suddenly, he’s told by Adelina Fortnight (Zoe Saldana) that he doesn’t, in fact, care.

This has to do with a lack of some sort of betrayal scene (like Judy Hopps accidentally did in Zootopia’s third act) between him and Mr. Link. They start off as friends and they stay friends throughout their adventure.

Are these terrible, movie-wrecking things I mentioned: no absolutely not! When one is dealing with a Laika movie you are likely going to set the bar extremely high. And still Missing Link manages to pass with flying colours; especially when you start to think about the craftsmanship involved.

Stop motion

Every behind-the-scenes- featurette they say it again. Laika isn’t so much a movie studio as it is a workshop of a collection of ‘crazy scientists’. Each and every day they try to find a solution to a problem posed. Be it animating water, rain, fire or something people take for granted -like giving characters believable facial expressions! The actors delivering the lines is one thing but if the animation doesn’t fit their words the illusion is gone.

I don’t know how the magicians at Laika did it and I don’t really want to know. Looking at the behind-the-scenes footage you’ll often see a lot of green screens. So, you might figure that there is quite a bit of computer-graphics involved. But then, when you start to break-down the scene you’ll quickly notice that it’s ALL stop-motion. The green screens are merely there to put one stop-motion sequence over another.

That’s one of the reasons why stop-motion resonates with movie-buffs (like me) so much. We want to know how things are done –yet, at the same time we don’t- and are amazed when a moviemaker manages an impressive feat with simple tricks without ‘cheatingly’ using the computer.

It’s a rather dual way of thinking that Laika positions itself in for me, but it pays off every time.

Just take the sea scenes, for instance. For years water was terribly difficult to animate on a computer (just look at the intro to King’s Quest VI). Nowadays we’ve got all kinds of algorism to pull it off quite effectively. So much so that ‘water scenes’ are often the easiest to animate (e.g. the shipwreck scene in Frozen).

But what does Laika do? Does it make use of twenty years of CGI water animation? Of course not! They make an intricate device to mimic the flow of water on screen in a controllable fashion (frame-by-frame).

This is insane! And this is the dedication that pours from the screen in every single shot!

Acting

We’ve come a long way since Snow white and the seven dwarfs as the behind-the-scenes footage of Missing Link shows us: the actors performed several intonations of the same line. They did this before a single frame was shot and returned once or twice when principle photography had begun. Criticasters might state that it sounds like an easy pay check.

Are they right? Or should we then praise the actors for their investment of the parts? I do think we should! By casting these actors the studio relied on them to fill in the parts. To create the characters. The actors therefore become part of the storytelling.

In ‘normal’ movies this is where the term ‘creative differences’ often pops up.

Nobody else but Zach Galifianakis could’ve played Mr. Link with his childishly positive yet courageous persona. The actor shaped the character. And the animation and character design, therefore, came from the actor’s performance.

All the actors do their best and it shows. My personal favourite scene is the banter between Stephen Fry as the villain Lord Piggot-Dunceby and Hugh Jackman’s Sir Lionel Frost. It’s witty, it’s fast and Jackman is enjoying himself tremendously speaking the Queens.

Visually

Quite the intricate device for what is basically a ‘butt joke’.

But, when dealing with a Laika film it is the visual side of the movie that is on the forefront. The voices of the characters move to the background in favour of the ‘whole’ (as it should be). Each new movie this studio bring out amazes you by the amount of love-for-details that the crew brought to their new epic. Even if Missing Link is a rather ‘small’ story its epicenes shows through every single shot by just the insane amount of (moving) elements present. It is, however, the style of Missing Link that might put you off.

The sets of Missing Link look amazing and ‘real’ (in contrast to the ‘crooked’ sets of Coraline). But it are the characters that look more cartoonish than Laika’s previous movies. This might take a bit of getting used to. Still, again, the emotional animation combined with the voice-work makes you quickly forget that.

And, with such a joyful story and so much love for depicting it this is an easy hurdle to overcome.

Found the Missing Link

Missing Link is, by far, Laika’s most accessible movie. There is no real dark heart to find in this adventurous tale of good overcoming evil and finding your family along the way.

Sure, there are two or three nitpicks. And, yes, -me being an adult who loves dark and scary stories- I would’ve preferred the studio to take the Coraline, Paranorman-path again. But the minute the charming Sir Lionel Frost is on screen, ten seconds in, you are willing to give yourself over to the spectacular tale these moviemakers-par-excellence have created.