Early Man. (PG.)
Directed by Nick Park
Starring Eddie Redmayne, Maisie Williams, Tom Hiddleston, Richard Ayoade, Timothy Spall, Mark Williams, Johnny Vegas and Rob Brydon. 89 mins.
Is he early, or late? The end of January is a damn strange time to be releasing a family animation; even stranger when the latest Pixar was released a week earlier. It isn't half term already, is it? I guess producers Studiocanal have a strategy but it looks an odd move for Aardman Animations, a brand that could do with a break. The tragedy of Aardman's attempts to turn their small screen National Treasure status into big screen global dominance is that they work in the one area of cinema where excellence dominates. If they specialised in rom-coms, or erotic thrillers, or cop dramas they'd have a clear path to pre-eminence, but nowadays even the worst cartoons are OK.
After the early success of Chicken Run, their story has been that of a string of good,-but-not-quite-enough efforts. We Brits still love them, but the rest of the world is skittish. The Aardman response here seems to be, sod 'em. Early Man is a knockabout, pun-filled comedy about tribes of cavemen playing football.
The level of the stop-motion animation, and the character design, doesn't seem to have evolved that much since the early days of Wallace and Gromit and the Heat Electric adverts. The contest here is between a good-natured but stupid group of Stone Age primitives (representing the British) and a group of self regarding, preening, arrogant Bronze Age types (foreigners) who consider themselves to be the masters of the game that we invented. It's fun and charming, but traditional and safe (unless it was your £50 million that was spent to make it) and seems to be aimed at nobody residing beyond the waters that border these isles, unless they are ex-pats. Like an England World Cup campaign it employs a lot of hard work in pursuit of a solid but uninspring vision that is unlikely to progress much beyond the group stages.
Directed by Nick Park
Starring Eddie Redmayne, Maisie Williams, Tom Hiddleston, Richard Ayoade, Timothy Spall, Mark Williams, Johnny Vegas and Rob Brydon. 89 mins.
Is he early, or late? The end of January is a damn strange time to be releasing a family animation; even stranger when the latest Pixar was released a week earlier. It isn't half term already, is it? I guess producers Studiocanal have a strategy but it looks an odd move for Aardman Animations, a brand that could do with a break. The tragedy of Aardman's attempts to turn their small screen National Treasure status into big screen global dominance is that they work in the one area of cinema where excellence dominates. If they specialised in rom-coms, or erotic thrillers, or cop dramas they'd have a clear path to pre-eminence, but nowadays even the worst cartoons are OK.
After the early success of Chicken Run, their story has been that of a string of good,-but-not-quite-enough efforts. We Brits still love them, but the rest of the world is skittish. The Aardman response here seems to be, sod 'em. Early Man is a knockabout, pun-filled comedy about tribes of cavemen playing football.
The level of the stop-motion animation, and the character design, doesn't seem to have evolved that much since the early days of Wallace and Gromit and the Heat Electric adverts. The contest here is between a good-natured but stupid group of Stone Age primitives (representing the British) and a group of self regarding, preening, arrogant Bronze Age types (foreigners) who consider themselves to be the masters of the game that we invented. It's fun and charming, but traditional and safe (unless it was your £50 million that was spent to make it) and seems to be aimed at nobody residing beyond the waters that border these isles, unless they are ex-pats. Like an England World Cup campaign it employs a lot of hard work in pursuit of a solid but uninspring vision that is unlikely to progress much beyond the group stages.
