Movie Review - Missing Link
MegaSoulhero Laika has come out with a new movie! In case you don’t know, I love Laika. I’ve pretty much enjoyed all of their films. Not only do these movies have great stories, they are also very well crafted. The animation is always so beautiful. I went to the Laika exhibit in San Diego last year and got to see what goes into making these films. Definitely takes a lot of work and patience. From Coraline to Kubo, these movies are top notch. Missing Link, unfortunately, isn’t one of those films.It’s about an explorer named Sir Lionel Frost who gets contacted by a creature known as the missing link to help him find his long lost relatives. So they travel to Shangri-La, but they are being followed during this adventure. To get positives out of the way, this movie is beautiful to look at. Since it’s Laika, it goes without saying that the animation is very well done. The sets are very big and detailed and the movements of the characters feel very real. Unfortunately, that’s the most praise I can give it. I found this movie to be pretty annoying. Not just because I was sitting next to a kid who kept on making noise and getting up from his seat multiple times and making gunshot noises whenever he heard a gun fire in the film while his dad didn’t even make an attempt to stop him since he was too busy looking at his phone, but this movie resorts to making a bunch of childish jokes that aren’t even funny. There’s fart jokes, “this guy is stupid” jokes, etc. I didn’t laugh at all during this movie. The worst part is some of these jokes get repeated. Like Mr. Link misunderstanding phrases. First of all, we already got jokes like that in Guardians of the Galaxy. Secondly, they do this so many times that it got on my nerves. It wasn’t even funny the first time. As a result, I couldn’t stand Mr. Link. He is right up there with Jar Jar Binks. The fact that he’s the main character really irritates me.
As for the other characters, there’s not much to say about them other than they are bland beyond belief. Well actually, Lionel Frost was such an unlikeable jerk for most of the film. All he cares about is himself. He ends up changing later on, but that was only after Zoe Saldana’s character gave him a speech. He really didn’t do anything to redeem himself. There are also these antagonists who I don’t even remember the names of. They are just so uninteresting and have very weak motivations. It seems like nothing is at stake here because none of the characters are very likeable. There’s also way too many cliches. Like the realization the two main characters have about not being too different from each other. We’ve seen that many times and they don’t do anything new with it here. There are moments where the movie has good ideas, but they end up being poorly executed and end up being a mess.
I know I’m pretty much bashing the movie, but I didn’t hate it. I just found it so frustrating because I feel like there is a good movie hidden deep in there. Unfortunately, it’s just a disappointment. This is easily Laika’s weakest film. But, I mean, they had to mess up some time. It’s funny that I wanted to walk out of both of the movies I saw last weekend. Though, for very different reasons. This one I wanted to walk out of because of the kid next to me being so obnoxious. The other one... oh boy. I’ll tell you about in my next review.
Score: 5/10