Match of the clay! It’s a Stone Age smash from the Gromit team
HIS film is set at the time when animal skin loincloths were the height of fashion.
And in the spirit of Early Man, Tom Hiddleston went for a touch of caveman chic at the premiere last night – by sporting an impressive beard.
But the actor, who voices villain Lord Nooth in the British animation, matched his facial hair with a very modern slim-cut violet suit.
The Night Manager star, 6, was joined on the red carpet by Eddie Redmayne, who provides the voice of plucky hero Dug.
The Oscar-winner, 6, went for a more casual look than his co-star, showing off a blue jumper and a nautical-style coat as he arrived for the show in London.
AS we brace ourselves for the usual dispiriting performance by England in this summer’s World Cup, football has at least come home in the latest work of genius by Nick Park, the creator of Wallace, Gromit and Shaun the Sheep.
It turns out that when it comes to animating 22 clay figures, and making them run around a pitch kicking a ball, we are world champions.
Early Man was directed by Park at the Aardman studios in Bristol, with all the wondrous expertise and staggering attention to detail for which Aardman have become renowned.
Apparently, no fewer than 3,000 interchangeable mouths were made, by hand, for the film’s characters. And what characters they are. Whether you like football or not, Early Man is a joy.
It tells the story of a Stone Age tribe who exist cheerfully if somewhat stupidly in their idyllic valley, when suddenly there is a rude interruption in the form of the sophisticated Bronze Age.
The cavemen face the confiscation of their beloved valley, not to mention annihilation and extinction, until the most resourceful of them, a youth called Dug (voiced by Eddie Redmayne), visits the Bronze Age town with his faithful porcine sidekick Hognob (grunted by Park himself) and finds that the favourite leisure activity there is … football.
The mighty neighbours even have a team, Real Bronzio, which is managed by the rapacious Lord Nooth (Tom Hiddleston, hilariously over- egging a French accent). The only thing Lord Nooth holds more sacred than football is bronze. He can’t get enough of the stuff.
Meanwhile, Dug goes back to his tribe, and eventually manages to persuade the chief (Timothy Spall) that there is just one way to wriggle out of their perilous situation.
They must learn to play football and challenge Real Bronzio to a game, with their very survival as the prize. Usefully, they have one brilliant recruit from the Bronze Age, a girl called Goona (Game Of Thrones’ Maisie Williams).
Also, it turns out that football is part of their heritage. Cave drawings reveal that the game was invented by their ancestors, who gave it up when everyone else got better at it.
It’s a wonderfully mischievous dig at the modern-day England team and the misplaced arrogance of those who think they still deserve to rule the world. Effectively, Dug and his friends must overcome 10,000 years of hurt.
WRITERS Mark Burton and James Higginson, working from Park’s original story, have worked in lots of cheeky references to the ‘Beautiful Game’. But there is so much more to savour, so much visual and verbal wit, that one viewing is really not enough.
Ancient history puns abound. Fleetingly, we see a copy of a newspaper, the Prehistoric Times, and its front-page headline: ‘Woad Rage’. Elsewhere, a poster advertises the ‘world’s number one toilet scroll’.
It’s all gloriously silly and inventive, and I especially loved the message bird, an avian version of a modern answer-phone, voiced by Rob Brydon.
There’s a very funny scene when the bird mimics a message from fierce Queen Oofeefa (Miriam Margolyes), to which Lord Nooth inadvertently, and dangerously, gives a dismissive reply.
Coincidentally, this week also sees the release of another brilliant Pixar animation, Coco. The clever people at Pixar are also wonderful at what they do, but their new production is so slick and clever that it doesn’t make you hug yourself with joy.
Early Man does. The stopmotion clay animation or ‘claymation’ mastered by Park and his colleagues at Aardman has a beguilingly primitive quality that perfectly suits a prehistoric setting. Their film deserves to be a mammoth hit.
Early Man goes on general release on January 26