To be honest, I cannot loathe a film in which a ruler yells, “The people we don’t want here are leaving! Make them stay!” There’s such a delightful cluelessness about it; it’s right up there with people who have similar thoughts to: “Why won’t you give the man who demanded to see Obama’s birth certificate the benefit of the doubt?!” And if these moments were more plentiful or the animation were better, I might have even enjoyed Missing Link, this decade’s answer to Around the World in Eighty Days.
I suppose there will always be a fascination with the generic exclusive London sportsman club … the kind of place where ancient Englishmen sit in uncomfortable £4,000 chairs while smoking £4,000 cigars and reading The Daily Nappy all the while betraying not an ounce of emotion. Of course, I have never seen such a club in person, but after Eighty Days and The Boxtrolls and “Sherlock” and, most recently, Hellboy, I have no doubt these places where stuffy men play God exist. Sir Lionel Frost (voice of Hugh Jackman) wants to belong to such a club. He wants to belong more than he wants to seek the legendary creatures around the globe.
After failing to deliver photographic proof of Nessie, Frost wagers club entrance that he can get physical evidence of the Missing Link, “Sasquatch” to be sure, who is currently hanging out in Washington State. Hence, Frosty the Showman gives the United States a whirl, where this mythical beast is neither myth nor beast. In fact, Link (Zach Galifianakis) is pretty darn easy to find, which makes me wonder if anyone had ever tried before. Perhaps they mistook the feathered (?), symmetrical, amiable purveyor of spoken and written word for something else; I sure would have were the title of the film not “Missing Link.” In fact, Mr. Link is only too happy to follow Sir Frost and join the world; after all, Link is the one who wrote the exact letter that summoned Lionel the red-nosed vulture to the Pacific Northwest in the first place.
So far, this movie has been little more than: “Whoomp, there it is.” These legends have been about as difficult to find as a robot in a Transformers film. Now that Mr. Link is on-board, I guess we’re gonna have some real adventures now, eh? And we do. Stepping up its game, Missing Link throws three plot points at us in succession: Mr. Link wants to visit his yeti cousins (I guess he missed out when Smallfoot was in theaters), Adelina Fortnight (Zoe Saldana) -the owner of the map leading to yetis … yes, there’s a map that leads to yetis- and Willard Stenk (Timothy Olyphant), a hitman out to quash the Sasquatch. I can’t say the movie got significantly better, or better at all for that manner, but at least the adventure got convoluted.
Mr. Link himself is civilized and friendly, but naïve. The whole joke here is taking him places and having idiocy happen around him while Link stays more-or-less undaunted. You see, the ape-man is unflappable because he doesn’t know enough to understand the dangers of the world around him. So Missing Link is the kind of film in which a reasonable eight-foot tall ape-like creature watches in half-witted fascination while things ping, clang, and crunch around him. I imagine this film seems quite condescending to certain youngsters.
What’s important, of course, is not my opinion necessarily, but the answer to “how will this film play to children and their parents?” There’s a few jokes kids will love, like Mr. Link “opening” a window by smashing it. Overall, I didn’t think there was enough of that stuff to truly satisfy a younger crowd. As for their handlers … well, I imagine you can sell the white-hunter-disregard-for-nature portion of this material to Trump parents without much effort; then again, the film is a backhanded promotion of evolution, which will work against the same crowd. Overall, this film feels like a middling extension of Smallfoot. Yeah, yeah, huge ape-men are ignored by society and “aren’t we all ape-men at heart?” No. No, we are not.
A comedy about a simian bloke
Who has no ego for our hero to stroke
Is this good? Lemme think…
Considering Missing Link
It’s only as strong as its weakest joke
Rated PG, 94 Minutes
Director: Chris Butler
Writer: Chris Butler
Genre: That casual mix between legend and weak animation
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Sasquatches, maybe
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: People who think ape-men should look like ape-men
