Missing Link (2019) - Movie Review

I’m starting to get worried about Laika’s foreseeable future in mainstream cinema. Not out of a fear that their work is going to start taking a serious decline any time soon, but out of a worry that there might not be enough people willing to see it. This film came out roughly a month ago, but because of an embarrassingly sparse release schedule over here, I’ve only just now gotten around to it. I know that Kubo And The Two Strings didn’t exactly set the box office on fire, but the reputation the company has garnered as doing far better with critics than general audiences could mean trouble. At any rate, we’re here to look at their latest, and needless to say, it’s another fine entry into their healthy artistic canon.

As the only people around who could possibly wrestle the crown off of Aardman’s head when it comes to stop-motion animation, the visuals here mostly meet their pedigree so far. It’s a globe-trotting adventure that takes British explorer Sir Lionel Frost (Hugh Jackman) and the titular Missing Link (Zach Galifianakis) from the woods of America to the mountain peaks of the Himalayas, and it not only looks great but lets the audience properly drink in every hand-crafted frame. As for the character designs, they admittedly work out well with a very ‘no forehead to be seen’ aesthetic for the humans, although be wary of any animal with eyes in this thing because it is unintentionally nightmarish at times.

ParaNorman’s writer/director Chris Butler’s second work under Laika finds him not only tapping into traits from his previous works, but also moments from the rest of Laika’s canon. Lord Piggot-Dunceby, the leader of a British explorer’s guild performed with delightful foppishness by Stephen Fry, is basically a distillation of the elitist cheese-eaters club from The Boxtrolls, and is utilised to similar effect in highlighting the ugliness of the British upper class. No matter how many times I see it, there’s always something inherently funny about an English speaker abroad who, upon meeting someone who doesn’t speak the same tongue, proceeds to keep speaking English only slower.

There’s also traces of the same conflict between the norm and the abnorm that fuelled ParaNorman, only here, they’re given a more colonial spin. Butler basically takes the conceit behind the title, the missing link between man and his primate ancestors, and tweaks it to apply to the relationships between man and other man. On one hand, you have England, a country notorious for its conquering of the world and ‘civilising’ savage races (read: tribal societies that were doing just fine before the ships landed). And on the other, you have the Wild Wild West, a frequent reference point for Carter Burwell’s soundtrack as well as the secondary villain Willard Stenk, a spurs-sporting bounty hunter. There’s a reason why the Wild Wild West has become short-hand for any domain with inherent lawlessness and/or lack of civility, making for a nice contrast to the main character and his own goals.

But while mocking the pretentiousness of the upper crust is quite old hat, the way it is applied through the film is quite fascinating. It ends up taking the idea of a missing link and ultimately ends up scrutinising it, as if the connection between civilisations on the basis of being human (or, in the Sasquatch’s case, bigfoot) isn’t enough. It also delves into the line between evolved and unevolved, echoing certain sentiments from Disney’s Pocahontas, only delivered with far less groan-worthy intentions. Rather than making judgements as far as cultures in comparison to others, it instead makes judgements on those who see glorifying their own culture over those of others and sees them worthy of scorn. The evolved man is one who lives and lets live, not insisting that all recognise their own greatness.

It’s a bit of a weird situation where, even with all of this in mind, I still don’t consider this film to be as thought-provoking as last year’s Yeti musical Smallfoot, but it’s not by that wide of a margin. This film maintains the Laika brand not just for animation chops but also for worthwhile ideas and stances being delivered through that animation. It’s quite retro in its adventure trappings, and while the humour on display is decidedly more sophomoric than I’m used to seeing from this company, its heart and smarts are still on point. I can only hope that this is enough to convince some to check this film out, because if this trend of disappointing box office receipts continues, this kind of genuine animated storytelling could soon be as mythical as the Sasquatch itself.