Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Animated Feature 2019

The Contenders:

How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
I Lost My Body
Klaus
Missing Link
Toy Story 4 (winner)

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.