Missing Link Review

It's a really sad day when I come to the realization that it might be the end of the road for a film studio that I really loved. Now I'm not relaying any official news here, but I'm just facing the reality that this very well could be the case for Laika Studios, who have just released their fifth animated feature, "Missing Link," to disastrous box office results. This following the fact that their first four films, "Coraline," "ParaNorman," "The Boxtrolls" and "Kubo and the Two Strings," weren't big hits, either. The reported production budget for each film was around $60 million and that doesn't even account for marketing and advertising or the incredible amount of time it takes to put together one of these stop motion films. Yet "Coraline" at $75 million is the only film of the bunch that even topped that $60 million threshold at the domestic box office. The other three earned around $50 million. And overseas totals haven't helped much, either. "Missing Link" this past weekend opened to less than half as much as what the previous four did, earning a meager $5.9 million. Best case scenario is that it holds well and winds up with $20-25 million. With continued diminishing returns like this, I don't know how Laika can justify moving forward, which absolutely breaks my heart.

My biggest question here is what went wrong? Unfortunately I think that the root cause of this is that stop motion animation is just not a genre people care about. The highest grossing stop motion film is "Chicken Run" in 2000 with $106.8 million. The previously mentioned "Coraline" total comes in second place. And even though "Missing Link" earning only $5.9 million in its first weekend, that's still better than the $3.2 million that "Early Man" opened to last year as well as the $4.03 million that "Shaun the Sheep Movie" opened to in 2015. Although not an apples-to-apples comparison, it also bested the $5.5 million nationwide expansion of "Isle of Dogs" last year. This genre never does well. People just don't give it a chance, which confuses me. I mean, if animated turdfests like "The Emoji Movie" and "The Angry Birds Movie" can make $86 million and $107 million respectively, why is it that "Missing Link" can't even open above $6 million? I mean, even "Wonder Park" last month opened to $15 million and that movie didn't even have a director. And I'm sure "Uglydolls" next month could do something similar. But yet parents won't take their kids to the latest stop motion animated film? This is an extreme injustice in my opinion that now might be too late to remedy.

In browsing various social media threads this weekend, a common thing I saw when it comes to "Missing Link" is that a lot of people weren't even aware of the movie's existence. That surprised me, but I suppose I do often take for granted how aware I am of just about every new movie's existence. I mean, I write a monthly preview for all the new wide releases and I also follow the box office numbers religiously. I even now have several years worth of Excel charts full of box office numbers. So yeah, you can say I'm a bit of a box office nerd. I often forget that most people aren't as weird as me in that regard. So allow me to attempt to come down to Earth a bit and explain to you what this "Missing Link" movie is. This is the second movie in an odd, unconnected trilogy of Yeti movies. Towards the end of last year we had "Smallfoot," a movie about a Yeti colony who have been told by their leaders that humans are a myth and there exists no land below them. The trailers made that look dumb, but it was a surprisingly charming little film. Later this year we will have DreamWorks' "Abominable," a movie about a magical Yeti who needs to return to his home. And in the middle of these two we have "Missing Link," a movie about Bigfoot wanting to find the Yeti colony.

If I'm being a little more specific with the plot of "Missing Link," it's a movie about a trio of adventurers being chased by a team of nefarious villains trying to stop them as they make their way to the Yeti colony. Sir Lionel Frost, voiced by Hugh Jackman, is a man who is overly obsessed with discovering urban legends like the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, Yetis, etc., but he seems to care mostly about his image and recognition. He desperately wants to be accepted by a certain club who happen to hate him. The leaders of this club are our nefarious villains who are out to stop him at any cost so that no one can learn of his discoveries and he can remain the laughing stock of the people around him. This setup leads to Frost finding Bigfoot, who turns out to be super nice and friendly. Frost names him Mr. Link because he believes that he is the missing link between man and ape. Mr. Link, voiced by Zach Galifianakis, can speak English perfectly and the script takes a page from "Guardians of the Galaxy" as he takes things super literally like Drax does. But Mr. Link is also super lonely. He has no more family around, which is why he wants to find the Yeti colony because he believes they are his cousins. So him and Frost agree to go find this Yeti colony.

I mention that we have three adventurers in this movie. The third one is Adelina Fortnight, voiced by Zoe Saldana, and she is an ex-lover of Frost. The reasons for her joining this expedition come at a more humorous note, but I'll let you discover those specifics on your own since that was one plot element that I didn't know of going in. Nevertheless, the movie is held up strongly by the chemistry of these three main leads. Hugh Jackman and Zach Galifianakis especially play off each other quite well while voicing these characters. Jackman's eccentric personality as Frost is super infectious and Galifianakis' lovable realism as Mr. Link had me cracking up quite often. There were a lot of these really dumb jokes that had me laughing way longer and harder than I think I was supposed. In hindsight, some of them weren't that funny. But I laughed like crazy anyways. Which is why I'm not going to give any examples because simply writing them down in a blog post wouldn't do them justice. The best way I can describe it is the puns or "Dad jokes" style of humor. That's definitely my cup of tea when it comes to humor and I will unashamedly laugh at a lot of that stuff. The Drax comparison is another good one. Mr. Link isn't as funny as Drax, but I'd say he's pretty close.

In addition to this movie being a fun adventure with a lot of dumb humor that is right up my alley, there's also an appropriate dose of emotion. A lot of that comes from Zoe Saldana's character of Adelina Fortnight. She's essentially the glue that holds the two others together. While they do have a lot of natural camaraderie, Frost has a lot of flaws that he's completely ignorant of. While Adelina starts the movie hating him, she eventually comes around and helps him see a lot of the error in his ways. While Mr. Link won't show that he's being hurt by Frost, and may not even consciously realize it, Frost's over-enthusiasm about his discoveries gets in the way of him developing the personal relationships with those around him. Adelina helping him realize that leads to him making an effort to treat Mr. Link much better and thus the two of them eventually are able to form a great brotherhood. It's a pretty strong bond that the movie does a good job of earning, even though you kinda see the end result from a mile away. This is a fairly predictable movie that doesn't put a lot of effort into being bold, but it's part of a genre of animation that doesn't  need to be, so the way it plays the notes so well makes it what I think is the perfect family movie.

I will fully admit that I have a strong positive bias when it comes to stop motion. The fact that so few people give it a chance makes me fight for it even harder, so if you're one of those who refuses to watch stop motion films because the style bothers you for some reason, I don't know if my review is the one to trust here in regards to "Missing Link." And I will admit that this isn't the movie that will convert you to the genre. It's a movie that plays things a bit safe. In comparison to Laika's other films, it's not as epic as "Kubo and the Two Strings." It's also not as fun and festive as "Coraline" and "ParaNorman." I'd say it's more in line with "The Boxtrolls" in terms of style. "The Boxtrolls" is a movie I found to be cute and adorable, but I know that it didn't win over everyone. The reaction was slightly mixed. I can see that being the case with "Missing Link." My personal biggest complaint is that the villains were cartoonish and useless. Their story arc felt more forced and quite honestly the movie would've been perfectly fine without it. But that aside, if you are a fan of stop motion like myself, I think you definitely need to go see "Missing Link," especially since Laika can use all the support they can get. I really want them to survive. My grade for "Missing Link" is an 8/10.