Animators score another claymation delight
Early Man a reliable go-to, with solid comedy and familiar animation
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/02/2018 (3144 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Adults seeking authentic belly laughs would generally fare better avoiding so-called adult comedies and seeking out British films made for kids.
That’s the conclusion one can draw from seeing Paddington 2 and, now, Early Man so far in 2018. Brit kids movies really deliver, comedically speaking.
Early Man is a product of the reliable Aardman Animation house, the folks who gave us the claymation delights of Wallace and Gromit and Chicken Run. This particular adventure plunges us into prehistory, as dinosaurs yield Earth to primitive humans, whose first big discovery is not so much the wheel as a soccer ball (actually, a red-hot meteor that comes with its own explanation as to why it’s best not to be handled manually).
Jumping ahead a few millennia, we catch up with a Stone Age tribe that has the misfortune of living in the Bronze Age. They are forced to relinquish their verdant patch of land to the tyrannical Lord Nooth (voiced by Tom Hiddleston, with a snooty French accent evidently designed to infuriate English audiences). Captured in the takeover is Dug (Eddie Redmayne), a simple, benign bloke intimidated by all the shiny new bronze technology of his new overlord.
Dug hits on the idea of challenging Lord Nooth for ownership of the land by exploiting his pride in his all-superstar soccer team.
Yep, back to soccer. Despite the primitive trappings, Early Man is really just a sports comedy wherein Dug’s team of underdogs must face an experienced, trained and arrogant team of superstars.
Think: The Longest Yard meets The Flintstones.
Dug has a ringer in Goona (Maisie Williams), a soccer-mad girl from Nooth’s tribe forbidden to play because of her gender. She joins Dug’s team and teaches the assemblage of lunk-heads a thing or two about teamwork.
So, yes, the plot is a little more clichéd than we’ve come to expect from Aardman, an animation house that has distinguished itself for its spirit of mad invention.
Fortunately, the comedy remains pretty solid, perhaps more so for fans of the sport who may catch an abundance of gags that result when a couple of commentators show up to do a play-by-play during the climactic match.
As always, though, Aardman’s secret weapon is the textural warmth of the claymation medium. While stop-motion animation is as slow and exacting an art form as you can get, one still has the sense that the filmmakers are engaged in child’s play at a kitchen table. Their work is so much less alienating somehow than computer animation, which is created in laboratory conditions, comparatively speaking.
It’s a small wonder the laughs come as frequently and as easily as they do.
Call it a home advantage.
randall.king@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @FreepKing
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Movie review
Early Man
Featuring the voices of Eddie Redmayne,
Tom Hiddleston and Maisie Williams
● Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne
● G ● 89 minutes
★★★1/2 out of five
Other voices
The film treads familiar ground by pitting a bunch of Davids vs. egotistical Goliaths on the soccer pitch. But it does so in such a supremely quirky and earnestly heartwarming fashion that it’s hard not to be charmed.
— Brian Truitt, USA Today
There is something easily and unassumingly good-natured about Early Man, an indication of what a very intelligent filmmaker Park is.
— Peter Bradshaw, Guardian
Early Man’s reliance on groaning dad-humour and stereotypical celebrations of British daftness feels prehistoric in all the worst ways, especially as the film rolls out a rubbish football plot about being rubbish at football.
— Alistair Harkness, Scotsman
Early Man is as charming as they come, bursting with the kind of daffy humour and off-kilter characters that have earned the company a worldwide following.
— Peter Debruge, Variety
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History
Updated on Friday, February 16, 2018 4:41 PM CST: fixes typos
