Review of The Missing Lynx (2008) by John B — 09 Jun 2014

When it comes to "The Missing Lynx" (the english dub of "El Lince Perdido") it's painful to say but the film leaves a lot to be desired and feels lazy. The plot centers around Felix, an accident-prone lynx. He is recovering from his latest injury at an animal recovery centre when the park is invaded by a group of mercenaries. These mercenaries, headed by a big game hunter named Newmann are charged with kidnapping two of every animal for an eccentric millionaire named Noah (like the one from the old testament, get it?). Felix and a few of his animal friends manage to escape capture but must find a way to rescue their friends.

The plot of the movie is thin and frequently feels padded out with unnecessary characters. You can summarize the entire plot with just a few sentences and leave out no important details so the movie has the heroes frequently get derailed in their quest by meeting a bunch of wacky animals or by focussing on some of the bumbling henchmen hired by Noah. There's a flamingo that's confused for a bat (don't ask) a pack of distrustful wolves and some vultures obsessed with recycling that bring a couple of gags to the film but leave no lasting impression. To their credit though, very few of the characters in the film have any personality. Aside from Gus the paranoid chameleon most characters have only a few characteristics and are very shallow. Felix is brave (he must be, because he's our main character and the leader of the group you see), he's accident prone and... in love with Lynxette (the love interest, a female lynx). Newmann is a hunter that likes killing animals and dislikes incompetent henchmen. That's about it for him. Beeety the goat is not afraid to take action and frankly, it's a big struggle to come up with any other outstanding features for anyone so I'm just going to give up. Special demerits go to Lynxette who not only has the laziest name for an animated character since any meat-eating dinosaur called "Rex" but falls in love instantly with our protagonist only to be immediately captured by the villains, is off-screen for most of the movie and has no personality whatsoever (ooh wait, is gender a character trait?).

The movie is clearly made with a budget that isn't even close to some of the big, beloved animated films made by major animation studios like Pixar or Dreamworks so I feel like I should give it a break in terms of looks but I just can't. The thing is, the movie frequently looks really good. There's a rhinoceros early in the film that looks unique, is well animated and is very detailed. Similarly, Gus the chameleon has a lot of texture in his scales, is well designed to look like a chameleon while allowing him to do very un-lizard movements. That character is memorable and looks good. Many of the other characters look vastly inferior, like the park rangers who look sloppy and the birds and mammals (aside from the lynxes) who have very little dimension and look completely devoid of textures. The backgrounds look solid but the movements and many of the faces aren't very expressive. It's a shame because you can see that there's genuine talent at work and it feels like if there weren't so many extra, useless characters extra time could have been dedicated to get the important models up to A+ quality. There have been some films where the special effects or animation weren't great but audiences didn't care because the film was funny, the acting was top-notch and the story was tight but not in this case. There are some funny moments but those are not from the dialogue, they're from the visual gags that were present in the original language. The acting is terrible and many characters sound like they are bored out of their minds reading their lines. The story, as noted before, falls limp often and there could have been at least 20 minutes cut from the film without any great loss.

Sure, children are going to enjoy themselves while watching "The Missing Lynx" but let's face it, children will like ANYTHING if they aren't forced to watch it and there's colourful stuff bouncing around the screen. As an adult you would never tolerate the film and watch it for your own enjoyment so why would you subject your kids to an inferior film? I feel bad saying this because I'm sure the original version of the film is better and there is talent present here but this is just a mess and I can't recommend it. If "The Missing Lynx" was the first movie you ever saw and you re-watched it as an adult you would feel extremely disappointed that your first memory of the art of film wasn't something that you could look forward to visiting over and over without having to justify because of nostalgia. I'm praying that the original Spanish version of "The Missing Lynx" was better because I want this animation studio, which has shown that they can do good work move on and improve. Unfortunately, there's just not enough working in "The Missing Lynx" to warrant even an average rating. (English Dub on Dvd, July 20, 2013).