Runtime: 95 minutes
Directed by: Chris Butler
Starring: The voices of
Hugh Jackman, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Fry, Timothy Olyphant, and Zach Galifiankis
From: Laika, Annapurna, and even though their logo wasn't included in the beginning, United Artists
Hopefully I can get a mea culpa for this being my first and only Laika movie...
At least Missing Link should be better than most of the PG-rated films that had trailers before this.
I know that especially on Letterboxd there will be some who will be appalled to hear that this the first Laika movie I've ever seen. I have no excuse for why it's just now that I have started supporting an underdog, a small company that animates in a retro style uncommon in modern times, a studio that isn't giant like Pixar and never has made a king's bounty at the box office yet still has an avid fanbase... shame on me, really. At least in the future I'll view their other works. As I have the AMC A-List app, I now feel more free to try out different films like this... and also I feel like it's a waste if I don't use it enough as it would feel like a waste of money with the 22 bucks a month I pay for it.
I never even saw a trailer for the film or any advertising on television for the film (perhaps why it is flopping at the box office) so I do not know how much of the plot they revealed; I'll just give the basics: Hugh Jackman voices a haughty wannabe explorer (Lionel Frost) who wishes to be accepted by the even haughtier club of adventurers and other “great men” in London. Frost looks for Sasquatch in Washington State and finds him... discovering he can speak English, even though he is quite literal and naive. They unwittingly team up with a Latin lady that Frost knows from his past as they go and try to find Bigfoot's relatives... the Yeti. Yes, it is quite something that in the span of about a year we will have this, Smallfoot, and Abominable... three animated kids films involving the Abominable Snowman. It happens by happenstance once in a long while and always amuses me. To borrow a quote I recently heard, judging from its trailer-which played before this-Abominable looks like the “studio notes” version of Missing Link.
Missing Link is silly, the humor is hit or miss and apparently this is more for little kids than Laika's previous works... I can still say the movie was charming and entertaining. The animation itself was always gorgeous and the story literally spanned the world, visiting various locations and seemingly thousands of different colors are on display in the film. Most importantly, this has a lot of heart and teaches some nice life lessons for the kids (such as how they shouldn't be selfish) and thankfully Laika is one of the few studios that does NOT make modern family films filled with such crude moments as burp and fart jokes.
As I previously mentioned, in the future I'll talk about the other movies that Laika has created as I presume I'll find them to be even more of a treat, and this doing worse than expected at the box office is a shame. As I usually don't see family films theatrically, I got the rare treat of seeing other family film trailers. Now, such works as Ugly Dolls, The Angry Birds Movie 2 and the aforementioned Abominable may not be bad, but the trailers did not inspire confidence. I am sure they will all make more money than Missing Link and that is just not fair.
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