Rated: PG
Directed by: Chris Butler.
Screenplay by: Chris Butler
Produced by: Arianne Sutner, p.g.a., Travis Knight, p.g.a.
Voices by: Hugh Jackman, David Walliams, Stephen Fry, Matt Lucas, Zach Galifianakis, Timothy Olyphant, Zoe Saldana, Amrita Acharia, Ching Valdes-Aran, Emma Thompson.
Sir Lionel Frost (Hugh Jackman) is a seeker of mythical beasts. All he wants in life is to be accepted into the Optimates Club – a society where he feels he belongs, working alongside those who discover and shape the world.
But really, it’s the ‘world that shapes us,’ Sir Lionel discovers, going on to say, ‘Someone should write that down.’ Ha-ha, I laugh, while writing the quote in my trusty notebook.
This is an amusing tale, from a giant footprint to a man-sized shoeprint, Sir Frost’s quest takes him on a journey to find the one who made that giant footprint, making a wager with Lord Piggot-Dunceby (Stephen Fry) that he’ll prove the existence of the sasquatch (Zach Galifianakis), to find the missing link of the evolution of ape to man.
If Sir Frost wins the wager and can prove the existence of the sasquatch, Lord Piggot-Dunceby agrees to apologise for his disbelief and Sir Frost would finally be accepted into the club of Most Notable Men.
The film is made using stop-animation, explained in the production notes as, ‘The manipulation of physical objects in small increments between individually photographed frames so that they appear to exhibit independent motion when played back in sequence. In practice, the animator moves the object, takes a picture, moves the object, takes a picture, and so on.’
The characters, puppets made from 3D printers and foam and any number of techniques, are exaggerated to give the puppets’ faces personality like the hooked nose of villain, Stenk (Timothy Olyphant) hired to take Sir Frost out of the exploring game and the apelike countenance of Mr Link used to off-set the human characteristics of being able to write and speak English.
The LAIKA animators photographed the stop-motion puppets 24 frames per second, turning the inanimate into characters with emotion – the exasperation of side-kick Mr. Lemuel Lint (David Walliams) shown in the half-lidded blink of an eye before getting, ‘mauled by a lake-monster’; Nessie coaxed out of hiding by a blast of bagpipes.
The humour of the taking-everything-literally, Mr Link didn’t always hit the mark for me. But as the film continued, the story and setting of the journey of Mr Link and Sir Frost, seeking others of the sasquatch kind – like the Yeti – evolved (ha-ha) with the addition of widow and once close acquaintance of Sir Frost, the fiery Adelina Fortnight (Zoe Saldana).
On the journey to Tibet to find Mr. Link’s distant cousins (the Yetis) we get Mr. Link naming himself Susan and mimicking a chicken who cannot be acknowledged, tickling as a granny Tibetan gesticulates with the demented chook perched on her head: hilarious.
Being a family film, I took my nephew along to enjoy together and to see if he liked the film – my nephew claiming the film deserved a 4.1/5.
Watching as an adult, I found plenty of humour to enjoy as well, thinking more 3.5, so I’m a splitting the difference and giving Missing Link, 3.7/5.