I have not come here to mock soccer. I’ve already written a book on the subject; you can find it elsewhere on the blog. My once hostile thoughts on this sport have softened considerably over the years. Yes, I’m never going to find soccer magical, but is it really any duller than baseball? Truth is, after a lifetime of advocacy involving projectiles and statistics, I realize my wife and daughter are ultimately correct: if stared at long enough, any sport can seem boring. From the strict examination of soccer I will, however, constantly wonder about the inferiority complex attached to the need to call it the “beautiful game.” Is this what you tell yourselves so you won’t feel so silly when you have wasted your day on a 0-0 tie? Does it work?
Early Man was into soccer, apparently. All it took was one leather-toed Neanderthal to take aim at a small meteorite and *poof* soccer, sorry “football,” is born. You know what would have been really funny, Nick Park, is if seconds after the cavemen started passing, dribbling, and scoring, on-looking cavemen started rioting — and *poof* the soccer hooligan is born. I’m sorry you missed such a golden goal opportunity.
If God really shaped early men out of lumps of clay, what do you suppose it means when Nick Park shapes Early Man out of lumps of clay?
Ages later, Dug (voice of Eddie Redmayne), his pet boar Hognob, and their prehistoric kin still live in caves. They hunt rabbits (sadly, not Were-rabbits). Their collective hunting skills are pathetic, which might save them ruination by natural selection – there’s only one female in the tribe and she’s beyond child-bearing years. As if we hadn’t been subject to enough bad history what with man and dinosaur living together in the opening, Dug and company are immediately floored by a bronze age tribe centuries ahead of their own. Imagine cavemen competing in the Roman Colosseum and you see the mismatch immediately. Dug don’t dig, jive?
Stowing away to the land of the new rivals, Dug discovers his foes are into a pastime called football. And “into” is an understatement; this new tribe treats football the way the Alt-Right treats trolling. To stave a quick execution after being caught, Dug challenges the Roman Footie Association to a grudge match –winner get Dug’s Valley. Why Lord Nooth (Tom Hiddleston) agrees on the match when he already has the valley will confuse historians for ages to come. Many spectators suspect that failure to accept the challenge would result in a very short movie.
So when is the last time you saw The Bad News Bears? Same plot, soccer story. This is no different than Little Giants or Mystery, Alaska or literally dozens of other David v. Goliath sports stories. We’ve seen
the soccer version of this tale in The Big Green and She’s the Man. We’ve even seen the animated soccer version in Underdogs not three years ago. Ahhhhh, but did Underdogs have claymation? No, I suppose it did not. The Bad News Bears world will be ROCKED in the animated soccer realm by the addition of disproportional limbs, snout-like noses, and huge blocky teeth.
Nick Park is a wonderful animator and has hundreds of fabulous ideas relating to modern innovation, but almost none of them have anything to do with his love of soccer. A movie like this has to sell something, either a love of game, a love of characters, or a love of the animation. The latter is the only one vying for your attention here, and it’s not winning. The Curse of the Were-Rabbit was brilliant, but it seems so far in the rear-view mirror at this point, it’s like the difference between the Bronze Age and the Stone Age. I still love Wallace and Gromit, so I find myself reluctant to give Early Man the rating it truly earned; suffice to say I laughed aloud exactly once in 89 minutes, which is pathetic for a Nick Park film.
♪We’re talking football
Claymation Cinderella
Talkin’ football
The teeth on this fella
Cavemen v. the whims of an archduke
Any entertainment is a fluke
Seen this film enough for me to puke♫
Rated PG, 89 Minutes
Director: Nick Park
Writer: Mark Burton and James Higginson
Genre: The Bad News Australopithecus Boiseis
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Claymation fools
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: “Seen it”
♪ Parody Inspired by “Talkin’ Baseball”
