Missing Link (2019)

Missing Link arrives from Laika with the sober, handmade gravity of a Victorian diorama and the box-office fortunes of a museum exhibit nobody visited. Sir Lionel Frost, voiced by Hugh Jackman, wants entry into a society of great men, which is to say he wants validation from a room of stuffed shirts. His companion is a Sasquatch named Mr. Link, later Susan, voiced by Zach Galifianakis, and their journey to the Himalayas is pleasant, well-animated, and modest in its cultural ambitions. The film is not indifferent to representation: Zoe Saldaña's Adelina Fortnight has agency, firearms, and a willingness to tell Lionel exactly how tiresome he is. Amrita Acharia appears as well. Yet the leads remain white British men, and the diversity feels incidental, not programmatic. That is not a sin. It is simply a data point.

A mild feminist streak runs through Adelina, who rebukes Lionel's self-absorption and ends the picture by leaving to adventure on her own terms. The villainous Society of Great Men is framed as imperialist and conservative, which gives the film a faint racial and political tingle without making race its central subject. The Yetis' isolationism is critiqued. Aristocratic gatekeeping is mocked. But the target is snobbery, not capital, so the eat-the-rich energy stays at a polite simmer. Mr. Link's arc about self-acceptance and belonging touches body-image themes in the gentlest possible way, more self-esteem than advocacy. No character is coded as neurodivergent, and the film has no interest in climate or environmental parable.

Missing Link delivers lessons about friendship, pride, and acceptance with a light comic touch. It lectures, but softly, the way a museum placard lectures. The result is a handsome, good-natured adventure that never risks real discomfort. It wants us to feel warm, not converted. As progressive artifacts go, it is the equivalent of a modestly reform-minded tea cozy: pleasant, well-made, and unlikely to radicalize anyone at the gift shop.