Missing Link (2019)

Directed by: Chris Butler | 94 minutes | animation, adventure | Dutch voice cast: Charly Luske, Matteo Simon, Birgit Schuurman | Original voice cast: Hugh Jackman, David Walliams, Stephen Fry, Matt Lucas, Zach Galifianakis, Timothy Olyphant, Zoe Saldana, Amrita Acharia, Ching Valdes-Aran, Emma Thompson, Humphrey Ker, Adam Godley, Neil Dickson, Ian Ruskin, Matthew Wolf, Darren Richardson, Alan Shearman

Laika’s latest film is always something to look forward to for lovers of animated films. The studio of father and son Phil and Travis Knight has been alone in the field of stop-motion animation since it was founded in 2005, with only the British Aardman Animations (which is responsible, among other things, for the Wallace and Gromit film series, ‘Chicken Run’ (2000) and Shaun the Sheep) as a serious competitor. The five films released by Laika since 2005 – ‘Coraline’ (2009), ‘ParaNorman’ (2012), ‘The Box Trolls’ (2014), ‘Kubo and the Two Strings’ (2016) and ‘Missing Link’ (2019) – distinguish themselves from the enormous bulk of animated films that are released by the love with which they are made. Stop-motion is an extremely time-consuming way of making film, because every frame, every movement has to be recorded separately and every staging has to be prepared by hand. The exposure is also done manually frame by frame. Can you imagine how much love the makers of stop motion movies have for their craft! Where you can still see the fingerprints in the clay figures in Aardman’s films, Laika skilfully removes them using CGI; the computer puts the dots on the i so that you hardly notice that you are watching stop-motion. With each film, Laika’s level continues to rise, much to the delight of the critics who walk away with the studio. Strangely enough, the general public is not really enthusiastic about Laika’s work, because the visitor figures for the cinema releases are disappointing. A shame, because these original, extremely detailed and idiosyncratic animation films are true works of art that deserve a large audience.

Compared to its four predecessors, ‘Missing Link’ has a lighter tone. In the late 1800s, we meet Sir Lionel Frost (voiced by Hugh Jackman), an opportunistic explorer who tries to make ends meet with ‘The Optimates Club’, a group of influential but short-sighted old men led by the deeply conservative Lord Piggot- Dunceby (Stephen Fry). For example, he and his assistant (David Walliams) go on a rowboat on Loch Ness to lure the famous monster Nessie out of the tent. They succeed, but where the ambitious Frost hoped to return home with a photo of the beast, Nessie decides to give the camera a swishing effort with her mighty tail. The ever-optimistic Frost doesn’t grieve for long, though, even when his assistant resigns after another perilous adventure; he’s already set his sights on a new monster: Sasquatch aka Bigfoot. And so Frost heads to the northwest of the US, not so much to hunt the Sasquatch, but mainly to prove that this missing link between (great) apes and humans exists. In this way he hopes to earn the respect of The Optimates Club.

Before long, Frost comes face to face with the Sasquatch, a surprisingly approachable and eloquent creature whom he initially calls “Mr. Link’ but who prefers to be called Susan herself. Instead of feeling exalted towards this curious but friendly creature, he engages in conversation with him. mr. Link/Susan feels lonely and would like to meet his distant Himalayan family, the Yetis. Frost is not the worst and goes on a trip with his new friend. Before they can get to Shangri-La, the paradise area where the Yetis are said to live, they must retrieve the map of Frost’s deceased colleague and friend Fortnight. His feisty widow Adelina (Zoe Saldana) initially doesn’t really cooperate, but decides to give the roguish duo the card anyway, on the condition that she can go on an adventure. Meanwhile, Lord Piggot-Dunceby has enlisted the cunning prize hunter Stenk (Timothy Olyphant) to thwart Frost’s plans.

What is immediately noticeable about the characters in ‘Missing Link’ are their delicious characteristic heads; this has clearly been given a lot of attention. Frost with his razor-sharp nose and chin, Stenk with his narrow, hooked nose (red tip) and sneaky look and Lord Piggot-Dunceby with his gigantic chin, haughty look and long gray hair. At least as much attention was paid to the backgrounds: the details with which the wild west, the jungle and the wild snowy plains of the Himalayas are designed are impressive, as are the textures of fur and clothing. The big man behind ‘Missing Link’ is Chris Butler, who also collaborated on ‘Coraline’ and ‘ParaNorman’, and opted for a less obscure approach here, but certainly did not fail to add a deeper layer to his film. Lord Piggot-Dunceby and his followers are very conservative with a narrow view of the world. Frost, on the other hand, approaches the world with an open mind. Without being too bold, Butler denounces conservative ideas about evolution, the division of power between men and women and the sense of superiority of white, middle-aged, Western men. The purposeful humor in this film – Mr. Link/Susan who takes everything literally and his clumsy fumbling – doesn’t always work out well and gets a bit boring after a while. Butler counters this with fine, subtler jokes and references (‘Lost Horizon’ (1937).

The story is a bit more straightforward than we are used to from Laika, but ‘Missing Link’ also manages to captivate us without any effort with its cheerful dynamics, beautiful design, visual inventiveness and great voice cast (also the voices in the Dutch version, with Charly Luske, Pierre Bokma and Birgit Schuurman, among others, is perfectly fine). Let’s hope that despite the disappointing cinema revenues, this studio can continue to make these kinds of unique animation films!