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Director: Nick Park
Release date: January 20, 2018
Rating: ★★
Review:
In ‘Early Man’ some cavemen have to play a soccer match to save their village from oblivion. ‘Early Man’ was Aardman’s seventh feature film, and the fifth using the studio’s trademark Claymation, but when compared to the wonderful movies ‘Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit’ (2005) or ‘Shaun the Sheep Movie’ (2015) ‘Early Man’ is frustratingly lackluster.
Sure, the film is wonderfully made, and clearly with a lot of love, and has the charm of fingerprints being visible on the clay puppets. Moreover, by now, the Aardman studio clearly makes its animation style look easy. Then there are the typical Aardman quirks, like the way replays are shown, or some funny side remarks, the best of which is “Sliced bread? That’s the best thing since… well, ever!”. I particularly liked the idea of the message bird, which not only repeats all that is said to him, but all the accompanying actions, as well. These little touches at times made me laugh out loud.
Unfortunately, the story is not half as good: it’s one long sum of cliches, never venturing into new or surprising story ideas, making the film surprisingly dull. Especially, the football match ticks all the familiar boxes of the sports film, and there are team effort scenes and unconventional training scheme scenes as we had seen already a thousand times, most recently in ‘Kung Fu Panda 3’ (2016) and ‘Cars 3’ (2017), which were both also frustrating affairs story-wise. The characters, too, are in no sense original, and feel emblematical, instead of rounded. Even the main hero Dug is appallingly onedimensional.
As said, ‘Early Man’ especially follows the sports film trope of the underdog winning against all odds but it does so in the laziest way. For example, at one point Goona makes clear to the cavemen that they may have a chance because they can be a team while their opponents are just a bunch of individuals. Now, there’s a chance to make the cavemen’s win believable. And what is done with this idea? Absolutely nothing. As soon as the real match starts, the so-called big difference between the behavior of the star players and the cavemen team on the field disappears. It’s disheartening to watch this saving element being left unused.
The world-building, too, leaves a lot to be desired. ‘Early Man’ doesn’t really play in the stone age, or the bronze age, or whatever. It is set in some fantasy sword-and-sorcery world with bare rocks and active volcanoes. Even the time period of the prologue makes no sense, set in the non-existing ‘Neo-Pleistocene’ and showing us cavemen living next to dinosaurs (in a nice little nod to Willis O’Brien, although the two creatures were apparently called Ray and Harry after that other great stop motion monster animator, Ray Harryhausen).
By the time the main story starts, the dinosaurs have disappeared, but some Flintstones-like gags remain, like little crocodiles as clothespins and a beetle as an electric razor. But then the studio adds some creatures that in no world make any sense whatsoever, like a giant woodlouse, a giant spider, a giant duck with teeth and some giant caterpillars. With these the film makers lost all consistency and believability of a world that was rather shaky to start with.
For example, the only green spot in this world is where ages ago a meteorite struck, but it’s in this world the cavemen live. How the other people survived in the highly hostile environment of the rest of the planet remains an utter mystery. It doesn’t help that most of this world is rendered in the ugliest and laziest computer animation, which contrasts greatly with the fine Claymation.
It seems the film makers too much wanted to make a football (soccer) movie, and got blind for the film’s flaws, which are instantly recognizable to any viewer. Instead, they should have thought things over, both about their story and their world, because the final film is a formulaic drag, and, not surprisingly, became a box office bomb.
Watch the trailer for ‘Early Man’ yourself and tell me what you think:
Director: unknown
Release Date: October 3, 1932
Stars: Flip the Frog
Rating: ★★★
Review:
‘The Goal Rush’ was released only twelve days before the Mickey Mouse cartoon ‘Touchdown Mickey‘ and covers the same ground.
It’s interesting to compare both cartoons, because they’re both lively gag cartoons full of action. Unfortunately, Mickey’s cartoon is better designed, better drawn, better animated, better timed, and better told than Flip’s. So where ‘Touchdown Mickey’ is one of Mickey’s greatest films, and one of the best cartoons of 1932, ‘The Goal Rush’ never really comes off. The gags are often trite, the timing is terribly sloppy and the story meandering.
We watch a football game between Burp University (a bunch of bullies) and Nertz University (Flip and some nerds). Flip’s frog design becomes more and more problematical among the human characters, especially as his love interest is a human girl. The human characters now all have their typical Iwerks designs, except for a very Betty Boop-like farmer girl Flip unveils under a haystack while riding a pig.
There’s a lot going on in this cartoon, but it’s difficult to indicate a good gag. There’s at least a surprising one in which a bandleader shoots a clarinet player who plays off key. The best gag may be the football (pigskin) joining a pig family.
Watch ‘The Goal Rush’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Flip the Frog cartoon No. 27
To the previous Flip the Frog cartoon: Circus
To the next Flip the Frog cartoon: Phoney Express
‘The Goal Rush’ is available on the DVD ‘Cartoons That Time Forgot – The Ub Iwerks Collection Vol. 2’
Director: Wilfred Jackson
Release Date: October 15, 1932
Stars: Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Pluto, Horace Horsecollar, Clarabelle Cow, Goofy
Rating: ★★★★★ ♕
Review:
Like the earlier ‘Barnyard Olympics‘, ‘Touchdown Mickey’ is as fast-paced sports cartoon. It plunges right into action, when we watch Mickey getting a touchdown for his team Mickey’s Manglers, in an attempt to defeat their opponents, the Alley Cats. The Alley Cats all look like Pete sans peg leg, and they prove tough opponents to Mickey’s much more diverse team.
The sheer speed with which the countless gags are delivered is astonishing, especially when compared to contemporary cartoons from other studios, or earlier Mickeys. By 1932 the studio made better use of Mickey the little hero than ever before, and ‘Touchdown Mickey’ excellently plays on Mickey as the underdog beating the odds. This means we can immediately sympathize with him and his feeble team, drawing us into the match ourselves – as we really want him to win.
The short marks Goofy’s third screen appearance and already he is a more recognizable and more defined character than Horace Horsecollar and Clarabelle Cow would ever be. In ‘Touchdown Mickey’ he’s a radio reporter, if a rather uninformative one, and in one of the numerous gags he accidentally mistakes the head of a colleague for his microphone. Twelve years later Goofy would be playing football himself, in ‘How to Play Football’ (1944), but by then is character had gone through quite some transformations.
Interestingly, there’s another character with a characteristic laugh in this cartoon, a fat pig in the audience, who wears glasses and holds a cigar. As his design is more complex than that of all other characters, I suspect him to be a caricature, but of whom?
‘Touchdown Mickey’ was released only twelve days after the Flip the Frog cartoon ‘The Goal Rush‘, which covers exactly the same subject to less satisfying results.’Touchdown Mickey’ is great, it’s fun and absolutely among Mickey’s all time best cartoons.
Watch ‘Touchdown Mickey’ yourself and tell me what you think:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnn3YzxtwZg
This is Mickey Mouse cartoon No. 47
To the previous Mickey Mouse cartoon: The Whoopee Party
To the next Mickey Mouse cartoon: The Wayward Canary
‘Touchdown Mickey’ is available on the DVD ‘Walt Disney Treasures: Mickey Mouse in black and white’
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 