Rent Early Man (2018)

Don’t waste your time - Early Man review by RB

Sadly let down by this film after previously enjoying their other films. I would only recommend if you are a big football fan with limited imagination.

Spot on, even if you don't like football - Early Man review by RM

Really enjoyed this animation, full of gags with excellent characters, a great bit of timing being World cup year this film is full of good philosophy "You are a football team, they are great players but not a team", and the concept of fair play is shown really well. Good feel good film!

Soporific - Early Man review by NG

The plot, if that's what it is, loosely supposes the invention of football in pre-historic times. After that, I'm afraid it is all downhill. The kids said they could hear me snoring, even after they had left the room early on.

Gone is the clever edginess of Wallace and Gromit.

I guess it is the kind of film which is made by film-makers who are no longer hungry.

Poor, very poor - Early Man review by Paul

*Spoilers*

The film starts by immediately showing ancient Earth with dinosaurs and early man. There's the first problem; Man was not on the Earth with the dinosaurs. Having this in a film will just lead kids to believe that they were. Bad.

Then there's the meteor strike that kills the dinosaurs which, apparently, was somewhere near where Manchester is today - no continents at the time so stupid joke. The dinosaurs die but the humans survive?!

After that it descends into a film about football and I completely lost interest and turned the film off.

Achingly 'politically correct' and diverse mess of a mediocre movie - Early Man review by PV

This film shows just why MERIT IS ALL and shoehorning female characters into films for pc diversity reasons never works.

It all starts well enough - and having dinosaurs and cavemen together is NOT a problem, because it's a story, not science documentary. Yes we KNOW humans and dinosaurs didn't live side by side BUT neither did T-Rex and dinosaurs like Stegosaurus - they were over 100 million years apart!

This film fails because it loses its focus which should be the story and instead tries to score pc feminist diversity points - from about the half way mark especially. I groaned when a female football player was introduced. Not needed at all. Neither are the token black characters, esp as cavemen tribes would have all been interrelated so all the same skin colour (except for slaves or traders).

This then turns into a football film as boring as Escape to Victory. I almost fell asleep before the end.

And I have no idea what accent Tom Hiddleston et all from the Bronze Age tribe are trying to do - but it ain't French, and silly to make Bronze Age tribe French anyway!

More educated people might like to read THE GIFT OF STONES by Jim Crace, a superb short novel which describes the bronze age tribe replacing a stone age one.

This is Aardman's worst ever film by a long chalk. Let's home they jettison the pc diversity worship for the next one, and get back to an all male Wallace and Gromit!

Fun but no Wallace and Gromit - Early Man review by PC

Aardman films are always worth a look and clearly lovingly made, this is no different. It takes a while to get going but once it does it have the usual mix of clever gags and slapstick.

Disappointment - Early Man review by KM

What a shame. All of the gentle subtlety, and understated humour of the original Nick Park films have been sacrificed to the brash formulae of the American market.