Early Male (2018)

Directed by: Nick Park | 89 minutes | animation, adventure | Dutch voice cast: Arjen Lubach, Koen Kardashian (Koen Pieter van Dijk), Nicolette Kluijver | Original voice cast: Tom Hiddleston, Maisie Williams, Eddie Redmayne, Timothy Spall, Miriam Margolyes, Richard Ayoade, Mark Williams, Rob Brydon, Kayvan Novak, Johnny Vegas, Selina Griffiths, Simon Greenall, Gina Yashere, Luke Walton, Kevin Matadeen

Although it was Peter Lord and David Sproxton who founded Aardman Animations in the early 1970s, the British film studio that specializes in clay animation is mainly linked to the creative brain Nick Park. He is the man of ideas. In 1985, when he joined Aardman, he was already planning for the characters Wallace & Gromit, but was unable to realize them on his own. After a number of short films, the creation of Aardman Features in the late 1990s gave way to feature films. The first, ‘Chicken Run’ (2000) and follow-up ‘Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit’ (2005), both in collaboration with DreamWorks, were resounding successes. Its follow-up ‘Flushed Away’ (2006), Aardman’s most expensive film and the first to be made entirely with CGI rather than the stop-motion techniques the studio is famous for, fell significantly less at the box office and caused a rift. between Aardman and DreamWorks. After ‘Arthur Christmas’ (2011) and ‘The Pirates! The Misfits’ (2012) in collaboration with Sony Pictures, Aardman now tries it with the French StudioCanal. ‘Early Man’ (2018) is the second film to come out of this after ‘Shaun The Sheep’ from 2015. Park selected Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne (‘The Theory of Everything’, 2014) and Tom Hiddleston, among others, for the voice cast. Redmayne – who was cast by Park for his role in the obscure ‘Black Death’ (2010), which also featured ‘our’ Carice van Houten – was eager to work with Aardman, he stated in an interview promoting the film. . “I didn’t even care what the movie was about. I’m here for Aardman! Fortunately, the script also made me laugh. And a lot too!”

‘Early Man’ opens with a cheerful prologue, which according to the explanation takes place in Manchester, around lunchtime (in the Dutch version Rotterdam is the place of action) that shows us how humanoids and dinosaurs together use the impact of a meteor to invent the forerunner of the ancient football game (that primordial humans and dinosaurs were never on earth at the same time, we’ll classify it as Park’s artistic freedom). Then we jump several millennia forward in time. A primordial tribe that evolved from those very first hominids lives in a lush valley (in the crater created after the meteor impact), where they spend their days mainly hunting rabbits. However, the young Dug (Eddie Redmayne) has bigger ambitions; why don’t they hunt mammoths? Before the chieftain Bobnar (Timothy Spall) can answer, the peace in the valley is shaken by the arrival of a bronze-clad band of warriors led by the insufferable Lord Nooth (Tom Hiddleston, who has “Allo’, Allo’” referring French accent). At the behest of Queen Oofeefa (Miriam Margolyes), he comes to claim the ore-rich area and chase the Stone Age primitives to a vacant lot further away, where they must work in the mines. The valley is transformed into a city where bronze predominates and where the main form of entertainment is the football matches in gladiatorial arenas. In a desperate attempt to save his valley, Dug challenges Lord Nooth to a decisive game of football. There’s just one problem: the prehistoric humans may be descended from the inventors of football, but they don’t do anything about it themselves. With the help of bronze age girl Goona (Maisie Williams), Dug and his gang finally dare to take on the Lord Nooth-backed star team Real Bronzio.

Stop-motion animation is almost as old as filming itself and has a nostalgic feel to it. In a prehistoric setting like this, this technique naturally thrives, especially when it’s Nick Park who directs. This technique is a true ‘labor of love’, because it takes an enormous amount of time to shoot the scenes. For that reason alone, we take our hats off to Park, who worked on this film for about ten years. It is a pity that ‘Early Man’ does not quite live up to expectations. Where for example ‘Chicken Run’ and ‘Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit’ excelled in originality, ‘Early Man’ mainly follows well-trodden paths. The underdog challenging the arrogant favourite, it is a theme that we have seen in numerous (sports) films. With a little imagination you can also pull out an allegory to Brexit (why else would Lord Nooth have that accent?), or even an ecological message about being frugal with our natural energy resources. But most (young) viewers mainly want to see a sequence of visual jokes, and they get them, although the visual jokes are quite predictable and stale. A film like this has to rely on its puns to appeal to an adult audience, as Aardman did with much of his earlier work. ‘Early Man’ exudes something quintessentially British, with humor best reflected in its original version, with the original voice cast filled with great British actors and comedians such as Rob Brydon, Richard Ayoade, Mark Williams and Johnny Vegas. In the Dutch translation, that typically British humor has been completely brushed off, and with it a large part of the charm of the film. So if possible, check out the original version, we’ll give it half a star more!