Early Man (PG)

Revolving around a primitive Stone Age tribe facing its own obsolescence in the dawning Bronze Age, the best joke in Aardman Animations’ latest stop-motion epic is the meta one regarding its own existence.

In the digital era, plasticine may as well be a pun on Pleistocene, so far apart are the technologies that give us Nick Park’s thumb-printheavy work and the slick CG visuals of Pixar. Sadly, while the primitive, painstaking, labour-intensive work that gives every Aardman film a unique visual identity is worth preserving, Early Man’s reliance on groaning-dad-humour and stereotypical celebrations of British daftness feels prehistoric in all the worst ways, especially as the film rolls out a rubbish football plot about being rubbish at football. ■