Early Man (2018)

Set in pre-historic times. Near Manchester, England.

The latest movie from Nick Park and Aardman Studios starts promisingly with a meteor hitting the Earth and wiping out the dinosaurs but not humans, who pick up the meteor and invent football with it.

The film then catapults us forward in time and pits a stone-age tribe of working class British people against a sophisticated bronze age European society in a football match. The prize is the tribe’s homeland which the bronze age empire want to mine for more metal, and they intend to turf the old people off their land to do it.

It sounds like high stakes but it doesn’t pan out that way in the film. Somehow, somewhere the plot gets lost and the stakes fade away.

Early Man is a well made, sweet film, but it is thinner than previous offerings from Park and team. There are moments to smile at but it doesn’t have the wit or intelligence to appeal widely to an adult audience, unlike the Shaun the Sheep movie, also made by Park. Shaun the Sheep is more heartfelt, the stakes are sky-high (the sheep miss their farmer father who has amnesia and has become an internet sensation, and they are being hunted by pest control), but Early Man doesn’t go far enough, and the script, while good, lets it down.

Not all kid’s films have to appeal to adults, but it helps – a lot. And for that you need cleverness mixed with your silliness, and you need good characterisation. The goggle-eyed, buck-toothed protagonists are fine but the best character is the pet hog who just wants to play football. And perhaps Queen Oofeefa (voiced by Miriam Margolyes) – although she is only in it briefly.

There are a few football cracks, and the visual gags are reminiscent of the Flintstones. One of the best bits is a bird which acts like a telephone and messenger, directly impersonating the caller, but it’s not enough.

There’s also an all-star cast of voices – Tom Hiddleston, Timothy Spall, and Eddie Redmayne as the main character Dug. Tom Hiddleston’s French villain Lord Nooth is great but Hugh Grant’s fading actor villain in Paddington 2 was much more engaging. It might be tougher with this kind of animation to pull out characters, but it worked better in Shaun the Sheep.

There’s much to admire about Parks and Aardman Studios and I don’t want to write Early Man off completely. As entertainment for kids goes, it’s probably better than most, although the recent Paddington 2 (not by Parks) had much more charm, heart, laughs, and a great storyline. Still, considering how good most of Park’s work is, it’s worth keeping an eye out for the Shaun the Sheep 2 movie when it comes out, if it’s a patch on the first one it will be great.