Missing Link

Hugh Jackman voices eccentric, egotistical explorer Sir Lionel Frost in Chris Butler’s animated comedy-adventure that also features Zach Galifianakis as a charming, eight-foot tall, 630-pound Sasquatch named Susan. The prologue involves a hilarious sequence in which Frost fails to prove the existence of the Loch Ness Monster because his camera broke. Undaunted, he’s summoned to America’s Pacific Northwest in search of the titular “missing link”—aka Sasquatch, otherwise known as Bigfoot. Snobbish, social-climbing Frost is determined to make a pivotal discovery that will qualify him for membership in London’s Victorian-era Optimates Club, an exclusive society of adventurers. As it happens, he was contacted by Mr. Link (Galifianakis) himself, a lonely simian who hopes Frost will accompany him—and, later, edgy Adelina Fortnight (Zoe Saldana)—on an arduous journey to find his long-lost relatives, the Yetis, in the legendary Himalayan valley of Shangri-La. What the trio of travelers don’t realize is that pompous Lord Piggot-Dunceby (Stephen Fry), a stubborn anti-evolutionary, has hired an assassin (Timothy Olyphant) to stop them. Featuring bright stop-motion animation that is simply stunning, this is recommended. (S. Granger)