Mining comedy bronze with Aardman
Early Man (out of 4) Animated comedy featuring the voices of Eddie Redmayne, Tom Hiddleston, Maisie Williams, Miriam Margolyes, Timothy Spall, Rob Brydon, Richard Ayoade. Directed by Nick Park. Opens Friday at GTA theatres. 89 minutes. PG Nick Park apparently flunked history in high school.
Early Man, the first feature directed by Aardman Animations ace since Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit in 2005, mashes the Stone Age with the Bronze Age for a story about soccer, a game formalized in the 19th century. You read that correctly. As always, Park is delightfully absurd with his stop-motion tomfoolery, although the story by Mark Burton and James Higginson only occasionally reaches the heights of Aardman films past.
This one is mad for soccer — or football, to use the term favoured outside of North America.
It begins during the “Neo-Pleistocene Age” (inspired by the Plasticine of Park’s claymation creations), when a flaming meteor wipes out unsuspecting dinosaurs. Surviving cave people use the red-hot meteor to invent soccer, a game they immortalize on their wall art.
Skip ahead “a few ages later” and a toothy prehistoric dude named Dug (Eddie Redmayne) and his fellow tribespersons find themselves kicked out of their valley paradise by Bronze Age thugs, who are led by a bloviator named Lord Nooth (Tom Hiddleston, affecting a French accent).
Nooth not only chews the scenery, he wants to plow it under for more bronze mines.
At first, none of this makes much sense. Then it begins to make entirely too much sense, as the story follows the shopworn premise of a David vs. Goliath sports competition: “The Brutes” vs. “Real Bronze,” as the scoreboard reads. Whoever triumphs in the match gets to rule the valley.
The cave people don’t really know how to play the game, but they have a ringer: Bronze Age woman Goona (Maisie Williams), who isn’t allowed to play soccer because of her gender — evolution is apparently working in reverse, since the so-called Brutes aren’t sexist at all while the Bronze Agers are the real knuckle-dragging Neanderthals.
Aardman’s quaint and goofy esthetic reigns, including multiple puns using “bronze” instead of “gold.” Some of the gags are prehistoric, although soccer funs will love the in-jokes, including one about Manchester United.
The funniest creatures in the movie are non-human: Dug’s faithfully foolish companion Hognob, an orange-furred boar voiced by Park; Nooth’s bothersome messenger bird (Rob Brydon); a wascally wabbit that must be kin to Bugs Bunny; and a mute giant mallard that thinks it’s a T.Rex.
That daffy duck is the best reminder of the Aardman of old, when Wallace and Gromit were silly just for the sake of it. Early Man gets by on fond memories of Aardman’s ancient history. Peter Howell Stalk and awe as the time-lapse documentary lens shows nature’s grand circular plan: spring buds, summer foliage, fall harvest, winter slumber.
It’s hard not to be impressed by what filmmakers Brian McClave and Tom Wichelow have achieved with their patient and watchful study of a Sussex walled garden. Seasonal changes that gradually and quietly occur in real life suddenly become explosive via artful photography, demonstrating the force by which nature proceeds.
Clouds race across the sky and warm winds suddenly turn to chilly rain and snow. Plants and flowers — daisies, tulips, daffodils and wild carrot among them — rise up and shrivel down again, set to the tune of Wendy Rae Fowler’s mesmerizing electronic score.
The scene enchants, but at the same time it cries out for a little context. Who are the humans who lovingly till this soil? They appear to earn their main income as apple farmers. We briefly see and hear them, but they remain as enigmatic as the stars above, also zooming past the watchful camera. PH There’s an intriguing premise here: what if an alien race, preparing for an imminent invasion and annihilation of humankind, sent three agents to do a little advance recon?
The three agents inhabit human bodies and seek out others to learn about human concepts such as “work” and “family.” “Love?” Well, that turns out to be much trickier.
There’s a dark and nihilistic underpinning here but the story itself is a different animal all together.
Narumi (Masami Kagasawa) begins to fall back in love with her husband, Shinji (Ryuhei Matsuda) after his transformation while veteran journalist Sakurai (Hiroki Hasegawa) throws in his lot with the other two members of the advance party while government agents, masquerading as health ministry workers, close in.
Chaos begins to spread through the general population amidst rumours of a mysterious virus.
It’s a quirky hybrid of a film that mostly works, thanks to some fine performances and by a script to goes in unexpected directions. However, it’s unlikely to satisfy sci-fi and action fans seeking more conventional fare. Bruce DeMara There’s a double meaning to the title of this intriguing and defiantly feminist film out of the Middle East. Laila (Mouna Hawa) and Salma (Sana Jammelieh) live large and party hardy in their Tel Aviv apartment where they’re joined by a third, Nour, a hijab-wearing woman who’s finishing her education and engaged to be married.
All three are living “in between” in Israel, a society where their status as Arab women among the majority Jewish population is rather problematic. They’re also “in between” a world where they can do as they please and a conservative Arab culture that expects women to behave modestly and to defer to men.
Laila may have meant the man of her dreams in Ziad (Mahmud Shalaby) while Salma, whose parents are desperate to marry her off, begins a lesbian romance. Dowdy Nour has a seriously controlling fiancé. As the struggles of love and life swirl around them, all three women form deep bonds of friendship and solidarity.
The performances are superb and the final scene of all three women sticking together in the face of adversity is sublime. BD Sean Baker’s empathy for the underclass helped make his iPhoneshot L.A. street drama Tangerine an indie hit two years ago.
His compassion remains fully intact, as do his storytelling smarts, in this considerably more polished yet no less absorbing follow-up: a tale of children growing up poor but full of wonder in the rainbow-hued motelstrip shadow of Orlando’s Disney World.
Foremost among a stellar cast of mostly unknowns is Brooklynn Prince, who plays the irrepressible Moonee, the 6-year-old daughter of grifter Halley (Bria Vinaite), a rebellious woman but devoted mom.
Oscar-nominated Willem Dafoe is the big star of the cast, but he downshifts into regular-guy mode with abundant grace — and serious Best Supporting Actor prospects — as a motel manager with a heart. Alexis Zabe’s rapturous cinematography reminds us that magic is where you find it. You don’t need a golden ticket to Mickey’s kingdom, although you can see it from here. Extras: a making-of featurette, cast/ crew interviews, bloopers/outtakes. PH