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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: Jan Švankmajer
Release Date: 1988
Rating: ★★★★½
Review:
Švankmajer’s films in the communist years preceding the velvet revolution of 1989 show a lighter tone than his earlier films. It’s like one can breath some of the thawing atmosphere in Czechoslovakia during the Perestroika years.
‘Virile games’ is a typical example. Although the film contains some very graphic violence, the film remains a rather cartoony atmosphere, and its end is rather tongue-in-cheek.
In ‘Virile Games’ we follow a mustached man watching a football match on the television. It’s a very weird soccer match, however: all players have the spectator’s face, and scoring happens by killing the opponents. These killings occur in the most bizarre ways, all deforming the opponent’s head till the player drops dead. One opponent for example is killed with cake forms, another by toy train….
In the second half the football match moves to the spectator’s own home, and the killing continues with the man’s own kitchen tools. However, tied to his screen, the man keeps watching the television set, not noticing that the violence occurs just around him.
In this film Švankmajer blends live action, stop motion, rather Terry Gilliam-like cut-out animation and pixilation with the stunning self-assurance of a mature film maker. Especially the clay-animation is top-notch. Like Georges Schwizgebel’s ‘Hors-jeu‘ (1977) the film directly couples soccer to violence, a clear indication of the author’s worries about growing football hooliganism. Apart from that, the film shows the maker’s trademark ingredients, like his obsession with food.
Watch ‘Virile Games’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Virile Games’ is available on the DVD ‘Jan Svankmajer – The Complete Short Films’
Director: Georges Schwizgebel
Release Date: 1977
Rating: ★★★
Review:
In ‘Hors-jeu’ we watch a soccer match change into a basketball match and into an ice hockey game. When violence enters, however, the game stops.
With this short film Schwizgebel builds on the concepts introduced in his previous film, ‘Perspectives‘. In ‘Hors-jeu’ he incorporates sound-effects and a rather surrealistic play with the rotoscoped images into his style. Surrealism would dominate his next film, ‘Le ravissement de Frank N. Stein‘ (1982), but in its visual style ‘Hors-jeu’ looks more forward to later films, like ‘78 Tours‘ (1985).
Watch ‘Hors-jeu’ yourself and tell me what you think:
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNzU1MjYzMjg=.html
‘Hors-jeu’ is available on the DVD ‘Les Peintures animées de Georges Schwizgebel’
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 