Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Don't listen to the negative reviews

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

With there only being a few days to go until a poll being held on IMDbs Classic Film board for the best titles of the 1915-1919 era ends,I started to take a look at a post that a fellow IMDber had kindly done which listed short movies from the period.Due to having heard about director Willis H. O'Brien legendary special effects work on the original King Kong,I was delighted to spot O'Brian's debut short,which led to me getting ready to find the missing link.The plot:Due to each caveman sharing affection for Miss Araminta Rockface,The Duke & Stonejaw Steve decide that they will fight to the death for Rockface's fair hand.Pushing Duke into a pot of boiling water,Steve prepares to declare himself the winner,but is stopped in his tracks by the sudden appearance of Theophilus Ivoryhead,who leads to Steve and Duke realising that they have a real fight on their hands for Rockface's heart.View on the film:Backed by an energetic score,director Willis H. O'Brian shows an amazing skill in bringing out the personality in each of the stop- motion characters. Displaying a surprising fluidity with the animation,O'Brian perfectly balances cute dinosaurs with a satirical upper-class Drama.In the sadly uncredited screenplay,the movie is given excellent Comedy shots,as all 3 cavemen try to win Rockface's heart in the land before time.

This is an extremely important animated short because it shows what Willis O'Brien, the special effects genius behind King Kong and many other stop-motion films, was doing early in his career. This film's quality isn't nearly as good as his later work, but you can see how he's learning and improving his craft in this film. You really can't rate it or compare it to later films because it was so crudely done in the very early days of animation.Now just because this is a rather crude stop-motion film does not mean it is bad. In fact, I thought it was pretty cute. It is the story of three suiters during the caveman days--each trying to impress the girl. Exactly what happens and how the wimpy guy gets the girl is actually kind of funny, but I don't want to spoil it.

It's amazing stuff now and it was probably even more so back in 1915. I can't believe it's gotten such low votes! Even if you can't get past its primitive nature (no pun inten ... oh well, what the heck, pun intended), surely you can appreciate it as a dry run for King Kong. Amazingly graceful, fluid movement at times, and O'Brien really must have had some fun scrutinizing every last detail of the missing link's body movements. Obviously the work of someone who cared.

This film is a 1910s version of what would today be called Claymation. It features dinosaurs, apes, and caveman. It is worthy of mention as it was one of the first films made by the legendary Willis O'Brien, who would later do the special effects for "The Lost World" and "King Kong". O'Brien's clay animation in "Missing Link" is certainly not as good as his work in later films(which featured far more advanced models). However, as this was one of the first films with stop-motion animation, it was a pioneering work for O'Brien, and for the film industry in general. It was probably not the first film to use stop motion animation, but it may well be the first dinosaur movie to have done so. These historical notes will make it worth seeing for some people, in particular those interested in film history.