In a world of giants like Pixar, Disney Animation, and Dreamworks, the movie company Laika is pretty small. But they were behind Coraline from 2009, and I also enjoyed the previous film Kubo and the Two Strings. I had not heard of Missing Link until it was already out on Blu-Ray. Apparently not many others did either, because it flopped so bad at the box office, I don’t know how Laika is officially still afloat.

The story starts with mythical monster investigator, Sir Lionel Frost. He wants to join a club known as the Society of Great Men. However, most of the guys think he is a failure and a loser. The group’s leader, Lord Piggot-Dunceby gives him a “chance” though. He says he has to go out and prove a monster is real and not fiction.

So Sir Lionel Frost meets a real sasquatch. Except the monster doesn’t have a real name. So Sir Lionel Frost dubs him “Mr. Link” after the “missing link” idea. However Mr. Link is very sad and lonely. He wants to travel to the Himalayan mountains in Asia, to meet others like him. As there doesn’t seem to be any other bigfoots in the country besides himself.

So Lionel Frost agrees to take Mr. Link to the snowy Asian mountains in search of snow-bigfoot known as Yetis. They actually need the help of Adelina Fortnight, Frost’s former girlfriend and the widow of his friend. She isn’t exactly too fond of Frost, but she agrees to help him and Mr. Link, but only if she tags along for the adventure.

Overall Missing Link is probably the film studio’s first non-gothic take, and kind of like Tim Burton, that’s where they shine best, which is ironically “in the darkness.” While the animation is good, the story seems like something they would craft for a TV film or for an animation studio made up of artists who couldn’t land jobs at Pixar or Dreamworks. I’m still at a disbelief how much they put into their budget (almost double of Coraline’s), and what do they have to show for it? It’s a decent movie, but it should have been much more and much better.

Score: C+