There are so many cliches to the movie that it makes this less of a Laika film and more of a Dreamworks Animation film. Add in the cloying disneyfied story with little tension and predictability and you get Missing Link, one of the weaker Laika films. I mean, this film has nothing special worth mentioning about it, even Laika's weakest film "The Boxtrolls" had more quirky elements and suspense to it. There is not much suspense in this one because one, I didn't care for the characters and two, the ending is anticlimatic, and three, there's not enough heart and soul to be found here. None of the humor I found that funny, I might have chuckled at one joke but that's about it. It's aimed particularly at children and a lot of the humor is either just lowbrow humor for the 9 year olds would get a kick out of or gags that you've seen in other kids cartoons.
There is no chemistry between the characters like for example, the forced romantic subplot between Zoe Saldana's character who I forgot the name of and Sir Lionel. The romance angle and her character alone was so contrived, like Zoe Saldona's character joins the adventure after Link and Sir Lionel robbed her house. Who would want to hang out with some stranger who broke into your house? Worse yet, they force in a romantic subplot between her and Lionel which doesn't make sense, why does she like this guy so much? This is the same jerk who broke into her house with some weird-looking monster, I don't get her whole weak character and her development. She is such an annoying character so it makes the film more intolerable to watch.
Throughout watching this film, I couldn't help but feel like it was missing something. Maybe it was missing the heart and soul that usually filled Laika films. For all intent and purposes, if you're looking for a nice animated buddy movie with some heart, you're better off watching Smallfoot, it's a bit different from this film and it's nothing groundbreaking neither but it has slightly more chemistry between characters and more heart to it. I don't believe a kid over the age of 9 would enjoy this. The only good thing about this film was a few of the action scenes and the animation, I cannot deny the animation is gorgeous as usual with Laika's films but that's the only points I can give it. I have no more to say about Missing Link. From its characters to its story, the writing was just meh, it's not horrible but it's not breathtakingly-good. I know I keep mentioning Laika's other films like Coraline and Paranorman but maybe I'm missing the darkness from those films because that's what I come to expect from Laika films. Maybe from this bomb, Laika will learn their lesson and return to the more whimsy and quirkiness of films like Coraline and Paranorman.
