Blocked at Every Turn, Yeti Persisted

Film: Missing Link
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on basement television.

I don’t know why Laika can’t catch a break. Missing Link is the studio’s fifth movie and in many ways their most accomplished. Like all of their previous movies, it has been nominated for Best Animated Feature at the Oscars and, despite winning a Golden Globe, will almost certainly lose to Toy Story 4. For as acclaimed as Missing Link is, it’s likely it passed over you. Costing around $100 million to make, it brought in only $25 million worldwide at the box office. Laika and its movies deserve so much better than this. Missing Link deserves better than this.

We begin with Sir Lionel Frost (Hugh Jackman), who is desperate to join the Society of Great Men, a group of adventurers who are dead set against his inclusion. This comes mostly from the group’s leader, Lord Piggot-Dunceby (Stephen Fry). Unable to provide proof of his encounter with the Loch Ness Monster and suffering from the departure of his valet after that encounter, Lionel decides instead to go hunting for the Sasquatch in the American northwest. In this endeavor, he is spurred on by a letter asking him to come and find the mythical beast. He gets Piggot-Dunceby to agree to letting him into the club if he does provide proof of Sasquatch.

ParaNorman

Film: ParaNorman
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen.

A couple of weeks ago, I ran a poll here to determine what new category of Oscar films I should add to the blog list. Best Animated Feature won in a close race, which turned out to be something of a relief—a few of those categories were pretty large. In the interests of getting things started, though, I figured I’d knock out ParaNorman, a recent film from Laika. I expected a pretty standard “scary” kids’ movie, which is not at all what I got.

Norman Babcock (Kodi Smit-McPhee) can see dead people. He can also talk to them. Since he’s the only person around who can do that, it’s no surprise that he is constantly bullied and harassed at school. It’s a little more of a shock that he’s bullied at home by his father (Jeff Garlin) and his sister Courtney (Anna Kendrick). His mother (Leslie Mann) is more sympathetic but still doesn’t much understand him, which makes his real support network the ghost of his dead grandmother (Elaine Stritch).