Early Man

photo courtesy of nothingbutgeek.com

SPOILER-FREE REVIEW

     Aardman Animations, famous for clay-mation classics like Chicken Run, Wallace & Gromit, and Shaun the Sheep, returns with Early Man, a comedy set in prehistoric times. Early Man features the talent of frequent Aardman writer/director Nick Park as well as A-list actors Eddie Redmayne, Tom Hiddleston, and Maisie Williams. Together, they produce a movie that makes an enjoyable—but limited—experience out of modest component parts.

     Early Man follows Dug (Redmayne), whose tribe of cavemen live in a fertile valley and hunt rabbits to survive. Dug and his friends are ousted from the valley by Lord Nooth (Hiddleston) and his army of Bronze Age miners, who expect to find valuable ore there. On a journey to the heart of the Bronze Age civilization, Dug discovers that their people love football (American soccer). Knowing that his own tribe had played the game in ages gone by, Dug challenges Lord Nooth’s champion team to a game to settle the ownership of the valley. With help from Bronze Age ally Goona (Williams), Dug sets out to train his tribe and win back his homeland.

photo courtesy of variety.com

     Trailers for the movie (and indeed, the movie’s first fifteen-ish minutes) seem to be setting up a very particular story: Bronze Age vs. Stone Age, past vs. future, a clash of cultures. Those elements are in play, to be sure, but in truth Early Man is much more straightforward: it’s an underdog sports comedy…which happens to be set in the ancient past. It feels like a movie from ten years ago, with a simple brand of humor, an unencumbered plot, and no pretensions about what it’s trying to accomplish. Viewers will be divided on whether they find that dynamic delightfully refreshing or altogether boring.  

     The humor, more than anything else, is what dates Early Man. The jokes rely heavily on puns and all-around buffoonery more than the quick-wit/irreverent humor that one typically finds in kid’s movies these days (though it is in keeping with Aardman’s clay-mation offerings). The result is a movie that’s generally, pleasantly funny without ever being especially hilarious.

photo courtesy of cartoonbrew.com

     Animation-wise, Early Man sees Aardman combine their usual intricately detailed stop-motion techniques with some forays into computer animation. Although you have to appreciate the level of craftsmanship that goes into a movie like this, there’s no denying that Early Man is sort of ugly to look at. In terms of color, the movie gravitates toward the grays of the Stone Age tribe or the brown, metallic palette of the Bronze Age civilization. The fertile valley is the only setting that gives the movie a real jolt of color, and it makes comparatively few appearances.

     Tom Hiddleston easily gives the movie’s best performance as the villainous Lord Nooth. He’s one of Early Man’s biggest punchlines, somehow managing to be equal parts greedy and incompetent. Redmayne’s character, who carries the movie’s primary emotional arc, is loveably naïve, and Williams’s Goona brings a nice change of pace when she comes onto the scene halfway through the film. Apart from these three biggest stars, the rest of the cast tends to operate somewhere on the dumb caveman spectrum—which, don’t get me wrong, is enjoyable in its own humble way.

photo courtesy of hypebeast.com

FINAL VERDICT: It’s not flashy and it’s not groundbreaking, but Early Man makes for agreeable entertainment on par with Aardman’s typical tone.

Watch the trailer here.

photo courtesy of vox.com