Stop motion films are fairly rarely bad movies for one basic reason: the amount of time it takes to make something in such a painstaking deliberate fashion usually tends to bring quality filmmaking at the highest spectrum of it.
Missing Link is a funny, easy-going film that would work in any format but thrives in stop motion.
Simple premise. Lionel Frost (Hugh Jackman) meets a Sasquath (Zach Galifianakis), a Bigfoot looking for his relatives. Frost decides to take the Sasquatch to his home and the adventure begins.
It’s a road trip/buddy comedy at its heart; Lionel and Mr. Link have a terrific chemistry. Galifianakis and Jackman work smoothly together and it carries the film in the same De Niro and Grodin’s chemistry carried Midnight Run. This is a road trip comedy at its heart and the two carry a fairly light comedy fairly high. In animated form Galifianakis is significantly funnier than he’s been in real life; this is the sort of animated role that Jack Black did extraordinarily well in the Kung Fu Panda franchise and is one you want to see Galifianakis continue to reprise.
Have you been bored lately by most animated fare? Missing Link is a good rental and a worthy ninety minutes of your time.
A handful of EPK pieces, as well as an interesting piece on the film’s final action sequence, are included.
20th Century Fox presents The Missing Link. Written and Directed by Chris Butler. Starring Hugh Jackman, Zach Galifianakis, Zoe Saldana, Timothy Olyphant, Stephen Fry. Run Time: 94 minutes. Rated PG. Released on DVD: 7.23.19.
