Early Man *** / *****
Directed by: Nick Park.
Written by: Mark Burton and James Higginson and John O’Farrell and Nick Park.
Starring: Tom Hiddleston (Lord Nooth), Maisie Williams (Goona), Eddie Redmayne (Dug), Timothy Spall (Chief Bobnar), Miriam Margolyes (Queen Oofeefa), Richard Ayoade (Treebor), Mark Williams (Barry), Rob Brydon (Message Bird), Kayvan Novak (Dino), Johnny Vegas (Asbo), Selina Griffiths (Magma), Simon Greenall (Eemak), Gina Yashere (Gravelle), Luke Walton (Huggelgrabber).
For the most part, the films from British animation studio Aardman are a refreshing break from the animated films produced and aimed at kids in America. It helps that their latest, Early Man, is only their 7th feature and they’ve been making them since 2000’s delightful Chicken Run, meaning that they don’t produce so much that we get sick of them, or that they start to feel like assembly line pieces, like so many of the even good American animated films do. That’s still true of Early Man, to a certain extent, and yet something about the film felt a little off for me from Aardman – something a little warmed over. The film is still sweet and funny, delightfully goofy, with a mixture of clever sight gags, and word play that at times can be clever, and at other times so knowing silly that it makes you laugh in spite of how cheesy the joke is. As consistently enjoyable the individual moments of Early Man are however, they never really build to up to anything greater – anything all that special. The film starts off as a cave man film, and ends as a sports film, and seem to be going through the motions in both.
The film is about a small, rabbit hunting tribe from the Stone Age – and our hero is Dug (Eddie Redmayne), who thinks that perhaps they should try and hunt something bigger, only to be told (as countless animated heroes before) that he should be happy with things just as they are. He doesn’t get much chance of that however, when his tribes valley is invaded by a new group – led by the nitwit Lord Nooth (Tom Hiddleston) – of the incoming Bronze Age, who wants to mine for Bronze there. Dug ends up in their city, and sees all the wonders of Bronze, but still ants to protect his home. He ends up (in a series of events too complicated to go over) challenging Nooth’s soccer team – Real Bronze – to a match for control over the valley. He teams up with a member of the Bronze city – Goona (Maisie Williams) – never given a chance to play because she’s a girl – to teach his ragtag tribe of misfits to play against the greatest team in the world. They’ll beat them, according to Goona, because they can be a real team – Real Bronze is full of great players, but they play as individuals.
There is hardly a sports movie (or caveman movie) cliché the film doesn’t exploit. To be fair, most of the time, they are playing with the conventions of the genres in interesting, fun ways. The voice work is quite good – with the likes of Redmayne and Timothy Spall being delightfully, innocent dim and hilarious, and the like of Hiddleston and his ilk being so goofily arrogant that they’re hilarious. The great Rob Brydon shows up and does multiple voices – the best probably a pair of sports commentators, who deliver play-by-play of things beyond the game.
Early Man is consistently fun – but I don’t think it every really finds its footing. The best Aardman movies – Chicken Run, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, even the utterly fun Shaun the Sheep – end up being more than just the sum of its parts, and I don’t think Early Man ever really does. Aardman, of course, got its start in short films (Nick Park, who directed this film, has won four Oscars – three for Short films), and Early Man feels more like a series of ideas for shorts, strung together. The film is still fun and funny – but it’s missing a little bit of that Aardman magic – that usually makes their films something truly special.
