Review: "Missing Link"

Ten years ago I was amazed by the stop-motion animation film “Coraline” from Laika, stating that it took a practiced eye to even tell it apart from standard animation. The action was so smooth and the world it occupied so vast, it was hard to believe it was made by infinitesimal changes to puppets photographed one frame at a time, 24 per second.

The newest from Laika, “Missing Link,” puts that film’s technical achievements to shame. This movie is so visually stunning that I again watched in disbelief. If not for some making-of sequences over the credits showing the painstaking process of putting it together, I might’ve thought the filmmakers were fudging.

They do use CGI animation for some of the backgrounds, but all the characters, clothes and sets are actually miniatures. Astounding.

Alas, I wish the story was a little stronger. Laika movies have been notable for their darker themes and complex narratives. (See -- especially if you already haven’t -- “Kubo and the Two Strings.”) “Missing Link” follows a rather conventional “finding your own path” story with a bigfoot creature.

Aside from similarities to other cinematic tales of late, including last year’s “Smallfoot” and “Abominable” coming out this September, the story makes the mistake of shunting the bigfoot character to sidekick status and putting all the attention on his human companion, a self-involved British explorer, Sir Lionel Frost, voiced by Hugh Jackman.

I’m reminded of the recent “Dumbo,” in which a bunch of humans took over the tale and the little flying elephant lost the spotlight.

The setup is that Frost has been trying and failing for years to be admitted to an elite club of adventurers, but the nasty leader, Lord Piggot-Dunceb (Stephen Fry), is determined to keep him out. Then Frost receives a letter alerting him to sightings of a bigfoot in the Pacific Northwest of America. This is the discovery that will finally secure his status, he figures.

Finding the bigfoot isn’t a problem -- turns out he wrote the letter himself. Resembling an 8-foot orangutan, the mild-mannered creature is voiced by Zach Galifianakis. As the only one of his kind, he’s always felt terribly alone, and wants to enlist Frost’s help in transporting him to the Himalayas to seek out the yeti, whom he feels are his long-lost cousins.

Dressing him up in a comically undersized suit so he can pass as a man, they refer to him as “Mr. Link,” short for missing link, though he later acquires an unexpected nickname.

Along the way they pick up an antagonist in Willard Stenk -- love that name -- a pint-sized shootist with claw marks across his bald head, and some (reluctant, initially) help in Adelina Fortnight (Zoe Saldana), a vivacious former girlfriend of Frost who holds a map to Shangri-La, where the Yetis reputedly reside.

The basic dynamic is that Frost is a self-centered jerkwad who only thinks of himself and his reputation, rather than relating to Link as a person with feelings and longings of his own. Adelina doesn’t have much to do but point out to Frost his missteps.

Writer/director Chris Butler previously helmed the excellent “ParaNorman.” I liked a lot of things about “Missing Link,” but it reads like a deliberate attempt by Laika to make a picture that has more mainstream commercial appeal.

Despite its glorious visuals, its lack of originality leaves it as a little better than middling bit of animation.

Video review: "Alice Through the Looking Glass"

I guess I’m just Mr. Contrarian. I despised 2010’s “Alice in Wonderland,” starring Johnny Depp as a decidedly off-kilter Mad Hatter. But the sequel is a charming romp that uses Lewis Carroll’s second novel as a mere jumping-off point for its own series of crazy, colorful adventures.

Of course, the first movie was a huge hit and the second died a quick death at the box office. Apparently, the majority of moviegoers like what I hate and hate what I like.

(Considering that for my epitaph.)

Perhaps give “Alice Through the Looking Glass” a chance on video, and maybe we’ll find we’re not so far apart after all.

This story (screenplay by Linda Woolverton) digs deeper into the Hatter’s past, using a kooky time-traveling device to see how he became so delightfully dinghy. Three years after the events in the last movie, Alice (Mia Wasikowska) returns to Underland to find Hatter has taken deathly ill.

In a delirium -- I know, hard to tell the difference with this one -- Hatter insists that his family, long thought killed by the Jaberwocky, is somehow alive and waiting for him. They track down Time himself (Sacha Baron Cohen) and steal his Chronosphere to jump back to years past.

Of course, the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter), she of the outsized head and aggressiveness, returns to muck up their quest. Anne Hathaway also shows up as the White Queen, and we find out a little more about the sisters’ long-ago divergence.

James Bobin, taking over the directing chair from Tim Burton, keeps the story more or less on an even keel. It turns out that when you have characters and creatures straight out of pure imagination, it helps to arrange them in a methodical way, rather than splaying them out randomly as the previous film did.

But don’t just take my word for it.

Bonus features are quite good, though you’ll have to buy the Blu-ray version to get the vast majority of them. The DVD comes only with one featurette about the making of the costumes.

The Blu-ray includes several more making-of mini-documenatires, the music video for “Just Like Fire” with P!nk, side-by-side comparisons of raw footage and final scenes, profiles of minor characters, deleted scenes and a feature-length commentary track with Bobin.

Movie:

Extras: 

Review: "Alice Through the Looking Glass"

I quite loathed 2010’s “Alice in Wonderland,” but here’s a pretty penny.

This sequel with only a tertiary connection to Lewis Carroll’s second Alice novel manages the rare feat of significantly outshining its predecessor. If the first film was “an exercise in cynical regurgitation,” to quote some meanie critic (*ahem*), then this movie gleefully tosses the books aside for its own freewheeling cogitation on the characters and dizzying world Carroll created.

“Alice Through the Looking Glass” is, dare I say, an exercise in audacious originality.

Screenwriter Linda Woolverton is back while director Tim Burton is not, and it pains me to say that his shifting to a producer role is undoubtedly for the best. Burton has worked with star Johnny Depp so much that he seems to have lost the ability to reign in the actor’s kookiest impulses, ceding the storytelling process to his latest costume-and-accent fetish.

In the last movie, Depp’s Mad Hatter character was a discombobulated mashup of emotions and loony behavior, a coy nincompoop one moment and a sword-wielding war machine the next. Even nonsense needs a consistent sensibility.

James Bobin, an accomplished television writer/director with only one other feature film to his credit (“Muppets Most Wanted”), gets the call and wisely keeps the Hatter in check.

Set three years after the last movie, “Glass” finds Alice (Mia Wasikowska) the captain of her late father’s shop “Wonder,” just returned from a long excursion to the Far East. Alas, upon sailing home to London she finds the family fortune raided by the local lord, whose marital advances she rejected before her deep dive down the rabbit hole into Underland.

Alice rejects the insistence of her mother (Lindsay Duncan) that she must sell the ship and give up her adventures. “I want to believe I can do as many as six impossible things before breakfast,” she stamps.

After stepping through a looking-glass portal, she finds herself returned to Underland just as Hatter has taken ill. He believes that his family, whom he long believed killed by the Jaberwocky serpent at the behest of the evil Red Queen, is waiting to be found. Alice must travel through time to save them.

The only way to do this is by stealing the Chronosphere from Time himself, here represented by Sacha Baron Cohen as a stern-yet-comical figure who oversees the great clock controlling the universe – both Underland and our world. “You cannot change the past, but you can learn from it,” he warns.

Thus sets off a jaunty trip through multiple time frames of Underland, so we get to visit with Hatter, the White Queen (Anne Hathaway) and their critter friends when they were younger, and then as pups. I should mention that the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter), with her outsized head and matching rage, returns as well, wooing Time to get her own hands on the Chronosphere.

As before, this is a CGI-heavy romp of bright colors and wondrous backgrounds, somewhere between medieval and Dickensian in setting, pure whimsy in tone. We learn a little more about Hatter – including his real name, Tarrant Hightopp – though not the exact origin of his… specialness.

“Alice Through the Looking Glass” is an unexpected surprise: a movie you thought you were going to hate that turns out to be quite a gem.

Video review: "Gnomeo & Juliet"

A second-rate rip-off of "Toy Story" mixed with a dose of Shakespeare, "Gnomeo & Juliet" is a British animated film that is meant to be enjoyed by the very youngest audience, and merely tolerated by their parents.

The set-up is that the star-crossed lovers, and all of their kin, are garden gnomes made of clay. They go about their business in the split backyard of an English duplex, tending their gardens and whatnot. When humans come around, though, they revert to their familiar (and tasteless) statuesque forms.

Gnomeo (voice by James McAvoy) is the hell-raising son of the matron of the Blue gnomes, while sweet Juliet (Emily Blunt) is royalty of their arch-enemy Reds. When they fall in love, it sets up a war between the clans, with the unfortunate ones ending up in a pile of smashed bits.

Directed by Kelly Asbury ("Shrek 2"), "Gnomeo & Juliet" has some fairly clever ideas, but always chooses the lowest common denominator when it comes to humor and characterization. The movie is pitched at about a pre-kindergarten level, and anyone more than a few years above that will find themselves frequently bored.
In this terrific age of animation in which we find ourselves, this film just doesn't measure up.

Extras are a bit sparse in the DVD version, and don't substantially improve even if you upgrade to Blu-ray.
The DVD has a "Crocodile Rock" music video, and featuettes with Ashley Jensen (who plays the princess' frog sidekick) and Elton John. That's it.

If you choose the Blu-ray/DVD combo pack (available in both 3D and regular versions), you get all the DVD stuff and several deleted or alternate scenes, including two alternate endings. There's also a "Fawn of Darkness" featurette.

Movie: 2 stars out of four
Extras: 2 stars

Review: "Gnomeo & Juliet"

Tolerable but forgettable, "Gnomeo & Juliet" is a halfway clever idea executed with minimal effort and ingenuity. In its (allegedly) humorous take on the classic play about star-crossed lovers, the film continuously reaches for the lowest-hanging fruit -- in its jokes, in its animation style and its brazen, narrow appeal to tykes.

Right from the start we're instructed that this is a movie with little patience for complexity. A gnome begins reading the introduction of "Romeo and Juliet," but is banished from the stage for his "long and boring prologue."

The hook is that the entire cast is gnomes -- not the mythical creatures, but garden gnomes. Cutesy to some and horrifying to others, these little ceramic cherub-cheeked critters are like a cross between hobbits and dwarves.

(They also, now that I think about it, bear a startling resemblance to Smurfs, who are getting their own movie soon.)

Not even bothering to hide how much they've lifted from "Toy Story," the gnomes come alive only when humans are not around, but suddenly revert to their statuesque forms if interrupted in their doings.

Interestingly, though they seem to have all the flesh-and-blood urges of people, they're still made of clay or whatever, and shatter if they fall or are struck. All of the older gnomes are chipped and faded, and even young rascal Gnomeo (voice by James McAvoy) has a scratched eyebrow and cheek from getting into so many (literal) scrapes.

The warring clans are the Red and Blue gnomes, marked by their pointed hats and/or clothing, who belong to elaborate gardens nestled side-by-side in a British duplex owned by neighbors who despise each other. (Their addresses are "2B" and a crossed-out "2B," in one of a few funny throwaway puns.)

The gnomes carry on that hostility, led by Lord Redbrick (Michael Caine) and Lady Bluebury (Maggie Smith). Various contests and sorties into enemy territory keep things going, with lawn mower racing being a big thing, and vandalizing the others' flowers and cheesy garden decorations.

Gnomeo, the son of Bluebury, falls for Juliet (Emily Blunt), Redbrick's only child, but of course their love is doomed. Eventually, their romance will overpower the hatred between the Reds and the Blues. I don't think I'm giving away much by saying that this ending is decidedly less tragic -- and G-rated -- than the play.

A few of the supporting characters breathe a little life into the stale proceedings. Juliet has a right-hand-woman, Nanette (Ashley Jensen), a frog statue who dispenses water and flighty advice. Featherstone (Jim Cummings) is an abandoned plastic pink flamingo, who's a bit dazed after 20 years of solitude but has a poignant story to tell.

Director Kelly Asbury ("Shrek 2") seems content to pitch things at about kindergarten level, with a sparse layering of in-jokes to keep parents minimally involved. Elton John is an executive producer, and provides some of his classic songs, plus a few new ones.

"Gnomeo & Juliet" sets some kind of notorious new record for screenwriting-by-committee, with no less than nine people receiving a writing credit -- 10, if you throw in Bill Shakespeare.

2 stars out of four