Missing Link

2019 cartoon

Rating: 15/20 (Buster: 20/20)

Plot: An adventurer goes on a hunt for a sasquatch, and after he meets one, they have an adventure.

What's Roy Harryhausen think when he sees these modern stop-animation things from studios like Laika and Aardman? Or from Wes Anderson, I guess? I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff, and I'll always have a place in my heart for the antiquated animation that brought King Kong to life or enabled cowboys to fight dinosaurs in something like The Valley of Gwangi.

The ambition of Missing Link is impressive, at least impressive enough for me to not even bother wondering if the movie has any deeper messages or if those messages are timely in this age of Trumpian politics and right-winger faux Christian values. I had issues with an action sequence near the end, probably an odd thing to be irritated about since there are a handful of other ridiculous action sequences including a very cartoonish opening sequence featuring a Nessy-esque sea serpent. It's probably especially odd since this is actually a cartoon, but maybe that's a tribute to how realistic these settings feel and how human the characters appear when they move or emote. But back to that action sequence--characters are defying the laws of physics in a climactic scene, and there's a succession of them all sort of linked (pun maybe intended) together. You wonder if the order of those characters--an order which shifts eventually--is saying something. The movie does seem to want to say something about outdated ideas, the kinds of beliefs that make manly men become manly men, and the clash of those ideas with more progressive ones. I'm just not sure what that is.

But I'm digressing anyway. I wanted to focus on the visual ambition of this movie. There are so many different sets, each with this impressive attention to detail, cluttered background, and textures. The Hugh Jackman character is on a boat in the middle of a foggy lake; in an office filled with pictures and various collected items; on the streets of London, on ships surfing stormy waves, in forests and Wild West towns, in luxurious homes with stained glass windows, on a stagecoach in Monument Valley, in a jungle atop an elephant. . .I could go on, but it would probably spoil some of the adventure. Sir Lionel Frost globetrots like an animated Indiana Jones, and if this was just the main characters--the good guys and the villains--wandering around these lands, that would probably be enough. However, the Laika people aren't happy with just the main characters and their story. There are all sorts of background characters created for this--characters who are entirely insignificant to the actual story but who add flavor to the whole thing--filthy cowboys picking their teeth with giant knife blades, for example. They just kind of blend into the rich background of these worlds Laika's creating here and make this so much fun visually.

Most of the characters--both the main ones and the fringe ones--get chances to be violent, sometimes with firearms, guns that seem even more intimidating because they're so realistic. Part of me wonders if the "message" of this movie has to do with guns.

I'm not sure if I'm done with this review or not.