Early Man | Little White Lies

Ear­ly Man

14 Jan 2018 / Released: 26 Jan 2018

Words by David Jenkins

Directed by Nick Park

Starring Eddie Redmayne, Timothy Spall, and Tom Hiddleston

Caveman and wolf stand in lush forest, surrounded by trees and sunlight.
Caveman and wolf stand in lush forest, surrounded by trees and sunlight.
4

Anticipation.

Big names in the voice cast, and a beloved British institution behind the tiller.

3

Enjoyment.

An eccentric little film which isn’t without its moments. And often very funny.

3

In Retrospect.

A mad idea that doesn’t quite come off. But charming all the same.

The Stone Age and the Bronze Age go to war in this daffy stop-frame com­e­dy from Aard­man Animation.

If you vis­it the great city of Berlin, jump on the U‑Bahn to Mehring­damm in Kreuzberg. As you ascend the steps to street lev­el, you’ll be con­front­ed with a pair of quick-fix eater­ies which define the local land­scape. There is a don­er kebab con­ces­sion named Mustafa’s which boasts lengthy queues at all hours, and a sim­i­lar­ly pop­u­lar cur­ry­wurst ven­dor called Cur­ry 36. Yet across the road, nes­tled just out of sight, there is a café which boasts a menu of assort­ed Eng­lish del­i­ca­cies: fry-ups, pies, fry-up pies, and lots of items that have been slathered in Marmite.

Bristol’s stop-frame ani­ma­tion pow­er­house, Aard­man, are now such an enshrined insti­tu­tion of this scep­tred isle that you could imag­ine their films would work as an edi­ble cure for the ter­mi­nal­ly home­sick. To the lev­el where you’d half expect to find them name-checked on the menu of a Euro­pean ex-pat cafe­te­ria. Their cheer­ful new fea­ture, Ear­ly Man, is direct­ed by Nick Park, the man behind films such arti­san Brit mas­ter­works as The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave. If you chose to watch this new film know­ing noth­ing about it, and were asked to guess its coun­try of ori­gin, it would take the unlearned among us no more than 30 sec­onds to guess cor­rect­ly. This film is as British as suet pud­ding and sug­ary tea.

In its open­ing shot, the frame slow­ly glides back on a scene of fiery car­nage dur­ing the pre-his­toric era, in a loca­tion that is tagged as Man­ches­ter. Plas­ticine dinosaurs engage in talon-to-talon com­bat against the back­drop of drib­bling mag­ma and blood-red skies, while hunched cave­men squab­ble while using gut­tur­al grunts and brash body lan­guage. It looks as though it’s going to be a glo­ri­ous Ray Har­ry­hausen-esque spec­ta­cle, yet sad­ly this brief nod to the god­fa­ther of stop-motion is lit­tle more than a tease.

A fire­ball descends from the sky and wipes out the vast major­i­ty of life. A gang of lone, per­plexed humans edge towards the impact crater where they dis­cov­er a still-siz­zling mete­or. Not know­ing why, where, how or what, one man pro­ceeds to pick up the mete­or. It is too hot for the touch, so he drops it and the group begin to tap it around with their feet. The joke: the beau­ti­ful game of foot­ball exist­ed before lan­guage, and was a cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non born direct­ly out of the Big Bang.

Skip for­ward a few mil­len­nia and the stone age as brought with it hunter-gath­er­ing, fire, shel­ter, the mod­ern eng­lish lan­guage and giant killer mal­lards. Dug (voiced with wide-eyed pep by Eddie Red­mayne) is a the none-more-plucky goof­ball who yearns for his mis­fit clan (led by Tim­o­thy Spall’s hir­sute chief Bob­nar) to upgrade from hunt­ing rab­bits to wool­ly mam­moths – to look beyond the cosy rep­e­ti­tions of their dai­ly expe­di­tions. They soon dis­cov­er that, out­side the ad hoc perime­ter of their cosy val­ley, the bronze age is already well under way. And progress waits for no man.

Close-up of a purple toy warrior figure holding a golden weapon, surrounded by other fantasy-themed toys and accessories.

Enter Tom Hiddleston’s camp, cash-hoard­ing tyrant Lord Nooth, who snatch­es Dug’s bronze-rich val­ley, but then decides to lay down a wager, giv­ing our heroes a chance to win back their turf. It’s at this point that the film diverts off course from sil­ly puns and whim­si­cal visu­al gags to some­thing unex­pect­ed and not a lit­tle strange. It’s a dif­fer­ent film to the one that has been adver­tised and trailed, for bet­ter and for worse. The mak­ers par­lay their exces­sive tal­ents into an under­whelm­ing under­dog saga of good ver­sus evil while doing their utmost to remind view­ers of the mil­i­tant­ly parochial com­ic tone they adore so much.

The ani­ma­tion itself is, as expect­ed, smooth and colour­ful. There are sat­is­fy­ing unvar­nished edges and tac­tile fin­ger­prints on the mod­el work, as well as a slight­ly over­stretched com­bi­na­tion of organ­ic and dig­i­tal ele­ments. The fig­ures sport giant mouths and tiny eyes, and the man­ner in which they have been designed serves to nat­u­ral­ly enhance the light com­ic poten­tial. Yet there’s some­thing nag­ging­ly slight about the project as a whole, whether it’s the quaint, under­cooked script, the bizarre two-tier set­ting or the fact that the sto­ry itself comes across as some­thing of an after­thought. There’s no deep­er alle­go­ry or polit­i­cal sub­text – just a fun excuse for some must-win sport­ing larks with a bunch of sil­ly jokes along the road.

Despite the fact that the film comes across as an over­stretched short, it nev­er shies away from just doing its own thing, how­ev­er brash or obscure the out­come. It nev­er pan­ders to an audi­ence demo­graph­ic, or attempts to sec­ond guess how the mate­r­i­al will play in, say, the Amer­i­can mid­west. It’s light, naughty” sense of humour feels like it’s been leached from a 70s Sun­day teatime sit­com. The film is what it is, and proud­ly so. Sad­ly, that’s not real­ly enough to allow Ear­ly Man to com­pete with some of the oth­er world ani­ma­tion play­ers, who do so much to push the medi­um for­ward with each new work.

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