Early Man

Whether your introduction to Aardman Animation was through their classic Wallace & Gromit pieces or Chicken Run or even Shaun the Sheep, you know one thing about the studio: they know what they’re doing when it comes to claymation and British comedy.  Their artistry (culminating in the characteristic mouths on their models) is undeniable, and their newest offering, Early Man, continues their legacy of quality and charm.

This time out, we’re given a glimpse of humanity’s earlier days when life was primitive and football (we’re going British here, so, my fellow yanks, we’re talking “soccer”) came about thanks to a chance meteorite.  We’re presented with a happy tribe of savages (by name only, mind you, as they’re quite the British Countryside bunch) who get by hunting rabbits.  All of a suddenly, in tromps the snooty lord of the Bronze Age, Nooth, who drives our folks from their land in the valley in order to secure mining rights.  Thanks to a chance accidental reconnaissance job by young sparkplug Dug, the tribe seizes their one chance at deterrence: challenging and beating the Bronze Age folk in a football match.

Sure, the rest plays out as you would expect, given the sports movie setup, but it’s all done in distinct Aardman fashion, complete with stunning stop-motion animation (including the various fingerprints set into the clay, Rodin style) and dry British humour.  Physical gags and mild-mannered one-liners abound, providing plenty of laughs of all sizes.  The voice cast, which features Eddie Redmayne, Tom Hiddleston (whose Norman (???) accent gives just the right amount of snooty superiority for Nooth), Tim Spall, and Maisie Williams, is superb, and even though some characters are given minimal development, you still get an idea of who they are thanks to the writing and acting.  As previously stated, the animation is stunning, using hundreds of models and intricately-detailed sets to bring us back to a very bygone age.

Probably the weakest aspect of the film is the plot, which turns into a rote sports flick pretty quickly.  I think they could have spent some additional time drawing us into the Stone Age world, expanding the geographical scope beyond the valley and surrounding badlands, but the football focus explains why this doesn’t happen.  Indeed, we’re instead thrust into Dug’s limited headspace, knowing only his immediate surroundings and being utterly dumbstruck by the strange ways of the futuristic Bronze Age people.  Thus the smaller scale and smaller focus work in perfect concert to tell the tale of a tribe working together to overcome large odds and regain their homeland by playing the very game their ancestors inadvertently invented.

This film is all-around quality fun.  It’s not necessarily aimed at any demographic in particular, which tends to mean it skews younger, but, honestly, this film can be easily enjoyed by anyone who appreciates quality animation, dry humor, and feel-good stories.  I’d whole-heartedly recommend it to pretty much everybody, and I challenge people to find something unappealing about it.  It’s good, clean fun and further proof that Aardman knows just how to make a solidly entertaining claymation film better than anybody.