LogFAQs > #975214760

20. Early Man

Inviso: 5
Ermine: 11
Plasma: 13
Red: 16
Evillord: 17
Johnbobb: 19
Mythiot: 22
Karo: 28
Suprak: 29

Total: 160

Inviso: I know he hasnt been everyones cup of tea throughout these rankings, but for me, Nick Aardman has yet to make a film that is so abjectly terrible that I felt compelled to rank it low on a list. Hes just got that quirky, British sense of humor that you know is going to at least produce something FUNNY, even if its not the most hilarious film of all time. Early Man is a weird concept about Cavemen versus Bronze Age humans in a soccer match, complete with weirdly anachronistic treatment of the sport and of modern society in general (instant replay just being a puppet show, for example). It was still cute and fun though, and its weird that weve had multiple instances of weird, cartoonish soccer matches in movies in the rankings, but weirder that the last film I saw in theaters (as of this write-up) was Dungeons & Dragons, which also featured a similar tinge to its ending. But yeah, I liked this, and it had a good heart overall.

Ermine: I actually enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I was going to. Not to say I love it or even really like it that much, but for the most part, it's just inoffensive fun with some awful jokes every so often. I did like the pig, and the section where he and the boy caveman were sneaking in to get another soccer ball was probably the best part of the film. That was some pretty good comedy there.
Overall though, very predictable film in every way, a few fun jokes and sequences but ultimately just not my thing.
BUT! It could have been so so much worse!

Plasma: Completely stupid, yet oddly enjoyable. The claymation does a great job at selling the goofy prehistoric atmosphere, the characters are silly yet fun, and the whole prehistoric soccer match scenario is so dumb that I cant help but love it. This is like a Mario Party minigame that somehow got green-lighted as a feature-length movie.

Red: Can't say I expected the concept of a bunch of stone age idiots getting overrun by a more advanced society to actually be an underdog soccer story. But this is about as standard a sports underdog story as it gets. Its tropey as heck. They face a far superior team of individuals that cant teamwork, they bring back a girl the main character likes who is actually a great motivational coach, teacher, and player herself, and she trains them to work as a team and see their potential to beat the super team. Oh and they have a revelation that yes, despite all their hopes and dreams, they really were a bunch of losers this whole time. This is so by the book standard underdog sports story I am internally laughing quite a bit at it. It isn't horrible, and masking a typical underdog sports story like this has some cleverness to it, but it still is safe and unremarkable.

Evillord: Aardman with another lovingly-crafted stop motion film, this time some sort of animated documentary about life in modern Britain.

Johnbobb: I mean it's no Ted Lasso, but it's pretty good. Might honestly be my favorite Nick Park movie, though that's not really a high bar as I've never really been a fan of Wallace and Gromit.

Mythiot: *no writeup submitted*

Karo: A bunch of cavemen challenge bronze age people to a soccer match and much predictability ensues in this highly unmemorable and extremely standard sports underdog story.
They do actually give some real stakes here instead of the usual shallow sport 'glory', but that doesn't change the fact that the story or the people who inhabit it are not interesting or likable and I just do not care if they end up being beat to death in the bronze mines or whatever.
Much of the film is just a bunch of ugly Aardman people being stupid and/or uncoordinated because cavemen, and a lot of 'prehistoric versions of modern things' gags that are not as clever or funny as the Flintstones.
There's a funny quip or two of British humor here and there, but it is largely dull, low-brow physical comedy that is only a few steps removed from being a Minions movie.
Aardman is just a highly overrated studio that has made like two good animated features in their lifetime and this certainly isn't one of them.

Suprak: *no writeup submitted*