In a sea of corporate, computer animated juggernauts, UK studio Aardman Animations have made their name doing things the old fashioned way, and now the Stop-Motion specialists are back with Early Man.
And they’ve brought a lot of big names with them.
Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne provides the voice of Dug, a Caveman living happily in the valley he calls home with his Stone Age friends. That peace is interrupted, however, when greedy Bronze Age leader Lord Nooth (Tom Hiddleston) takes over their valley in order to mine for (you guessed it) bronze.
Determined to rescue their home, Dug challenges the Bronze Age city’s championship football team to a match – if they win, they get their home back. If they lose, they’ll be sent to work in the new mine.
There’s just one problem: Dug and his friends don’t know what football is. With the help of would-be player Goona (Maisie Williams), however, they may stand a chance.
Much like Pixar, it feels like a disappointment for an Aardman film to be ‘just’ good. Having been blown away by the likes of Wallace & Gromit, Arthur Christmas and the incredible Shaun The Sheep Movie, Early Man is a likable comedy, but one that feels a bit too light by comparison.
The David V Goliath style plot centres around a game of football and not much else. In fact, it’s so focused on the climactic match that this feels decidedly more like a movie about football than it is about cavemen.
There are football gags throughout the story, but it’s difficult to imagine who these are for – most of the references will be lost on younger viewers, or anyone who isn’t particularly a football fan. It’s not that it isn’t well done, it’s just an odd focus when there could be a lot more going on in the film.
That said, there are moments of hilarity.
Dug’s band of cave people are charming, wrestling with problems like embarrassing mums and giant, roaring geese. There’s also a hint of Gromit about Dug’s pet, Hognob, whose massage scene with Lord Nooth is easily one of the best sequences in the film.
While the range of accents means you’d never guess it was them, the all-star voice cast does a great job. The stand out by far is Hiddleston, clearly having great fun sporting a comedy French accent and making Lord Nooth much more enjoyable than he might have been.
At 85 minutes, Early Man doesn’t outstay its welcome, but those who remember the classics from the Bristol-based animation studio might come away thinking this should have been more.
There are enjoyable flickers of the old Aardman magic, which at the end of the day will be enough to keep little ones entertained while we all wait for the Shaun The Sheep sequel.
MORE: Eddie Redmayne’s tribe prove useless at catching rabbits in new clip for Aardman’s Early Man
MORE: Star Wars, Lord Of The Rings, Disney sculptures made entirely out of…Babybel cheese?
[contf] [contfnew] 
METRO
[contfnewc] [contfnewc]
