Missing Link 2019
Laika is an American studio that does stop motion animation, making a string of highly rated movies, starting with Coraline in 2009 and releasing a new movie every two or three years. They are pretty consistently nominated for Oscars for best animated feature, but keep getting pushed aside by Disney and Pixar. Missing Link is their latest offering, in 2019, but despite solid reviews, it was a box office bomb. It is not their best work and the main character, a sasquatch, who looks particularly goofy, is maybe one reason why. He is voiced by Zach Galifianakis which gives him a certain charm, but also that uneasy unfunniness that Galafiankis brings to his roles, plus he is given some way too easy jokes that fall a little flat. The rest of the characters have the skinny leg Victorian look from The Nightmare Before Christmas and the faces have large pointy red noses. I think the character artists really let the movie down because the publicity materials did nothing to bring audiences in. That may also be the fault of picking a movie about a hairy beast when hair is a really difficult thing to animate this way. The movie starts out with a great sequence at Loch Ness, but sags in the middle despite another amazing sequence on board a pitching ocean liner, and finishes with a great action scene in the Himalayas. The characters didn’t really grab me and while there were some good gags, the movie wasn’t consistently funny and the story has certainly been done plenty of times already. Still, Hugh Jackman is good in the main role, Galifianakis is acceptable, and the animation is fun to watch. One nice thing about getting the blu-ray is the included extras showing how the scenes are done with time lapse photography as you watch the animation artists working and a scene slowly coming to life (lots of changes of clothes on the animators to give you an idea of the weeks some short scenes take). After the financial disappointment of this movie, I am not sure if Laika will continue the same way and I can’t imagine they wouldn’t be better served trying to use CGI to do all of this, but their movies are always worth watching.
Written: 24 Dec 2019
Owned on: Blu-ray, DVD, Digital