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.

Review: "This Is Where I Leave You"

I'm not sure if "This Is Where I Leave You" is the most original film ever made, but what it lacks in freshness it makes up for with delectable actors and snappy scenes. The Altmans are borderline crazy, self-obsessed and narcissistic, but somehow 103 minutes with them feels like time well spent.

Directed by Shawn Levy ("Night at the Museum") from a screenplay by Jonathan Tropper, based on his own novel, the movie brings together the four adult children of the Altman clan after their father passes away. Mom Hillary (Jane Fonda) is a real piece of work, a showboating therapist who wrote a best-selling book, "Cradle and All," in which she spilled the intimate details of her kids' tumultuous upraising.

They have not, unsurprisingly, turned into well-adjusted adults. And they're none too pleased about their mom's insistence that they sit Shiva together for seven days, per their father's dying request. (This, despite being only partially and nominally Jewish.)

Judd (Jason Bateman) is the fulcrum, the character upon which all the others pivot. A successful radio producer and one of those guys who seems to have the perfect little life planned out, he's thrown for a loop when he catches his wife sleeping with his boss.

Sister Wendy (Tina Fey) is brittle and angry, mother to two young kids and married to an on-the-go businessman who can't put down the phone and work for even a few minutes, not to mention witness the miracle if his child's potty training.

Paul (Corey Stoll) is the oldest and most responsible, the one kid who stuck around in his hometown to take over the business from his father. He and his wife (Kathryn Hahn) have been trying without success to get pregnant, and the pressure and constant questions about their progress is like splitting a rail.

The baby of the clan is Phillip (Adam Driver), born years after the others and partially raised by them. A natural-born screw-up with an impish talent for needling others, Phillip is dating a much older woman (Connie Britton) who acts as his enabler and sugar momma.

The filmmakers essentially throw this grab-bag of resentment, sibling rivalry and neuroticism into a pot and set it to a slow boil. There are arguments, jokes, bonding, more fighting, and so on.

It doesn't sound like much, but the cast really drives the material to terrific heights. They click in a way that you rarely see large ensemble casts do; usually each actor is trying to accomplish their own goals for their character and sacrifice the group dynamic. This is the sort of movie that you can't imagine any other performers in those roles.

A few minor characters flit in and out of the foreground. Across the street is Hillary's dependable friend Linda (Debra Monk) and her son Horry (Timothy Olyphant), a former beau of Wendy's who suffered a terrible brain injury years ago. He sort of wanders around, helpful but forgetful, like a more verbally proficient Boo Radley.

Wade's estranged wife (Abigail Spencer) turns up, pleading for a second chance and with more drama to share. Penny Moore is a townie (Rose Byrne) who's stoked a long-burning fire for Wade, and he's at a low point where those glowing embers are looking pretty good. I also enjoyed Ben Schwartz as a young rabbi who can't outrun his horndog teen reputation and nickname.

Despite not a lot of screen time to spread around to every character's story, the film does a good job of making each of them distinct and relatable.

"This Is Where I Leave You" plays out fairly predictably, but I didn't mind the lack of surprises because the journey getting there is so caustically funny and unexpectedly heartwarming. When the Altmans aren't verbally punching each other -- sometimes physically, too -- you want to give them all a good squeeze.

Review: "I Am Number Four"

A tall, handsome loner is the center of attention at the high school in a tiny, close-knit town. The offbeat, slightly ostracized girl finds herself drawn to him, intrigued by his secretive ways.

When he reveals himself to have extraordinary physical and mental super-powers -- to indeed not even be human -- their relationship grows increasingly complicated. They must navigate the challenges of the town's cloistered social structure, her estranged former love interest who harbors a powerful jealousy, and marauding forces coming to wipe out him and his kin.

The plot of the last "Twilight" movie, right?

Nope, it's "I Am Number Four," a new movie based on the book by James Frey and Jobie Hughes (who use the combined pen name of Pittacus Lore.) Considering the young-adult novel was just published last August, I don't think I'm out of line in postulating that it was written with an eye on crossing over the teen vampire phenomenon.

True, John (Alex Pettyfer, a dead ringer for a young Ryan Phillippe) isn't looking to make a meal out of Sarah (Dianna Agron). But the dynamics and target audience of "Number Four" are a close match with Edward Cullen & Co.

It's a shallow, cynical bit of movie-making, certainly never boring but rarely engaging on either an intellectual or visceral level. The cast of mostly twentysomethings posing as teenagers does an awful lot of pouting and strutting, like mannequins brought to life and back-lit heavily.

John is a Lorien, one of nine survivors of a dead planet wiped out by the evil Mogadorians. As chance would have it, all the remaining Loriens are hot-looking teens who each have special powers. They use various names as they travel from place to place hiding out from the Mogs, but are known mainly by their numbers.

The Mogs, who must have some kind of collective OCD complex, are hunting the Loriens down in order. As the story opens, Number Three bites it, so John is next.
John and his guardian, Henri (Timothy Olyphant), have to leave their beach home when their cover is blown. John is hanging out with a girl at a beach party when his leg starts burning and glowing like a lighthouse. This being 2011, every teen at the party has a smart phone to take pictures and video, and soon John's exploits are all over the Web.

Here's where things get a little fuzzy. Henri doesn't seem to do much actual guarding but mostly spends his time cruising the Internet looking for any kind of photos or info people have posted about John, which he then wipes out so the Mogs can't use it to track them down. This, of course, ignores the fact that he's only erased the stuff from the Web site where people uploaded it, and not the actual data on their cameras, iPhones or whatever. They can just post it again somewhere else.

I know I'm picking nits here, but a movie that purports to be pseudo-science fiction ought to have at least a pseudo acquaintance with technology.

Anyway, Henri and John end up in Paradise, Ohio, and things transpire pretty much as stated. The heavy is Sarah's ex-boyfriend Mark (Jake Abel), and Callan McAulliffe plays Sam, the local undersized science nerd who quickly becomes John's wingman.

John's telekinetic powers manifest just in time to fight off Mark and his bullies, and tackle the Mogadorians when they show up. They're big trench-coated dudes with head tattoos and gill slits next to their noses, who wield massive laser rifles and keep some kind of bat/wolf/lizard beastie as a tracking pet.

Derivative and dull-witted, "I Am Number Four" appears to be gearing up for sequels, but already feels stale.

2 stars out of four