Metacritic score: 66
Alissa Wilkinson covered film and culture for Vox. Alissa is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics.
Missing Link is the tale of a Victorian-era explorer named Sir Lionel Frost (voiced by Hugh Jackman), who is desperate to prove the existence of a creature who forms the missing link in human evolutionary history and thereby prove his bona fides to other disapproving explorers. And he does! But to his surprise, the sasquatch he meets (whom he dubs Mr. Link, voiced by Zach Galifianakis) is a well-mannered, lonely creature that wants to meet with his probable family, the yeti.
Frost — who is curious about the yeti, too — agrees to help him, and brings along a rival lady explorer Adelina Fortnight (Zoe Saldana), who has the map they need. Together, the unlikely trio set out for Shangri-La, where the yeti are rumored to live.
Missing Link comes from Laika, the studio that made the wonderful 2016 stop-motion film Kubo and the Two Strings, with which it shares its eye-popping animation as well as a gently satirical take on the world that’s plenty suitable for the whole family. It’s silly and sweet, a funny movie that’s about how your real family, in the end, is the one you choose.
