From the archive: "Early Man"

Amid the chaos of Brexit, Aardman - one of our last remaining national treasures - keep calm and carry on. In its own way, Nick Park's directorial comeback Early Man arrives as a comment on tribalism and our relationships with our neighbours - but what it most closely resembles is a British retort to Disney's Moana, the big, belting inspirational songs replaced by a cover of Mud's "Tiger Feet", jokes about the most trivial of things, and a football motif that entails more than a few cheeky riffs on the word "balls". Only Park would have visualised the glowing remains of the meteorite that wiped out the (here, very Harryhausen-ish) dinosaurs being juggled and knocked about by game cavemen in the direction of obelisks passing for goalposts; only Park would have imagined the crater formed by that meteor strike being co-opted as a pitch framed by cantilevered Subbuteo stands (and a New Wembley-style arch) containing neo-pleisticene supporters paying over the odds for entry. This will be the venue for Early Man's derby tie between wealthy Europeans who've enjoyed the considerable evolutionary advantages of the Bronze Age and a plucky troop of stone-age Brits, made up of types that have endured into the 21st century: a lumpen, fists-first Northerner who goes by the name Asbo (and is voiced, somewhat inevitably, by Johnny Vegas), an embarrassing mum (Selina Griffiths) who nods and winks around the word "tackle", plus a silky-skilled continental import who - as per 21st century animation convention - is female (voiced by Maisie Williams, no less) and bears the name Goona, which may limit the film's appeal in certain North London postcodes.

Early Man opened to modest reviews at home - not terrible, but certainly cavilling, less effusive than those generated by Park's Wallace-and-Gromit output, which may just be to this director what the Toy Storys were to Pixar: a high bar set very early. Tellingly, this is the first time Park has directed from somebody else's script, and it does look as if the pleasurably baroque, fiendishly clever plotting of Park's own screenplays has been quietly dropped in favour of something altogether more route-one. The new film sets up its main event and stakes - that football match for the right to live on in this valley - then doodles gags while we wait for the big kick-off. Most of these gags, thankfully, are rather good: the stadium, with its "suspended" players hanging over the centre circle, offers comic possibilities in every direction. Maybe it's the blokey soccer milieu, but there is also a certain tendency here towards dad gags: it's the kind of script where a character says "a simple solution won't just walk through the door", only for the door to open and present everybody with just that. (You smile, but it's a little predictable, where Park's very best work has generally been more surprising.) Still, even on this midtable, playoff-chasing form, Park's films remain a reliable pleasure to watch, and none of those critics could have foreseen how, with its "we're going home" subtext, Early Man did pre-empt the summer of 2018, when a plucky tribe under big chief Gareth Southgate pulled itself together and performed better at the World Cup than anyone dared hope. Given the unusually convivial atmosphere within the England camp, it wouldn't surprise me to learn there was a copy of Park's film aboard the team bus, and that it provoked the same levels of chuckles and titters there as it had everywhere else on the continent.

(January 2019)

Early Man returns to selected cinemas from today.