Another Aardman crowdpleaser
Early Man (PG, 89mins) Directed by Nick Park
Dug (Eddie Redmayne) likes to dream big.
While the rest of his tribe are happy just to hunt rabbits, he’s convinced they can capture a mammoth. Assisted by his trusty hog Hob Nob, he begins laying the groundwork for his ambitious plan. However, before he can put it into effect, he and his people become the hunted.
With superior technology and weaponry, a new tribe steamroll into the valley, forcing Dug and his kind to flee. An inadvertent bump to the noggin sees Dug transported into the invaders’ stronghold, where he discovers a way of life light years from his own, with the inhabitants obsessed with a roundball game. Blundering his way into the main arena, Dug gains himself an audience with the nefarious Lord Nooth (Tom Hiddleston) and makes a bold wager – that if his tribe can beat Nooth’s expensively assembled Real Bronzio at their own game, they will win their valley back. Lose though, and they’ll all become mine workers.
Like The Curse of the Were Rabbit and The Pirates! before it, Aardman Animation’s latest adventure offers entertainment aplenty.
The claymation creations are character-filled delights, the vocal cast (which also includes Maisie Williams, Richard Ayoade, Johnny Vegas, Miriam Margolyes and Rob Brydon) is top notch and the gag quotient off the Richter scale. As usual, much of the delight is in the details, whether it’s shop signs that say Jurassic Pork or Flint Eastwood, a headline that reads ‘‘Woad Rage’’, or dialogue like, ‘‘Dug, you haven’t eaten your primordial soup’’.
The heart of Early Man though is England’s obsession with football. Dug’s tribes’ history with the game definitely has deliberate parallels to the home of Manchester United, Wembley and Bobby Moore and director Nick Park (on helming duties for the first time since 2008 Wallace and Gromit short A Matter of Loaf and Death) plays them up.
A character is named after a major club’s nickname, another team is namechecked in a later joke and even Kenneth Wolstenholme’s famous 1996 World Cup commentary is parodied.
If Aardman’s 2000 tale Chicken Run was a remake of The Great Escape, then Early Man’s clear inspiration is fellow World War IItale Escape to Victory (with a touch of Monty Python and the Holy Grail) with a comedy pre-historic pig subbing in for Pele.
A ball-tearing, net-busting crowdpleaser, Early Man offers plenty of fun for the whole family. - James Croot opens in New Zealand cinemas on March 29.
Kes, 8.30pm, Saturday, Ma¯ori TV
Ken Loach’s Bafta-winning 1969 drama about a 15-year-old neglected and bullied boy who seeks solace by stealing and nurturing a small kestrel. ‘‘A compassionate, powerful high point of low-budget realist cinema,’’ wrote Total Film magazine’s Philip Kemp.
Sue Perkins and the Chimp Sanctuary, 7.30pm, Sunday, Choice
In this new, one-off BBC documentary, the animal-loving comedian travels to America’s Chimp Haven to meet a group of newly retired female chimpanzees. After a recent change in US law, decades of medical testing on chimpanzees has been brought to an end and cameras follow as Jill, Whitney, Paula-Jean, Tessa, Martha and Ariah settle in to the sanctuary after an 800-mile journey from a laboratory in New Mexico to rural Louisiana.
Stan, 8.30pm, Sunday, Three
New 90-minute documentary which promises to follow ‘‘the highs and lows of much-loved New Zealand music and acting idol Stan Walker, as he comes face-to-face with one of ‘‘life’s biggest challenges’’. ‘‘I wanted to make the documentary to help people, and to also help myself process the whole thing,’’ Walker himself says.
Billions, 8.30pm, Tuesday, SoHo
Damian Lewis’ Bobby Axelrod and Paul Giamatti’s Chuck Rhoades Jr continue their battle of egos and wits in the third season of this excellent US drama. Added to the mix is John Malkovich as a Russian billionaire.
I Am Not Your Negro, 8.30pm, Thursday, Rialto
James Baldwin was a man who knew Malcolm X, Medger Evers and Martin Luther King Jr and was deeply saddened by the death of each of them. Raoul Peck’s 2017 documentary takes archival footage of the writer and raconteur, blends it with his words (narrated by Samuel L Jackson) and comes up with a portrait of white America’s attitudes to its African-American counterparts that feels hauntingly relevant today. ‘‘A ferociously well-argued, blazingly intelligent, wondrously layered and utterly watchable piece of work,’’ wrote Stuff’s Graeme Tuckett.
The Americans, 9.30pm, Thursday, SoHo
Start of the10-part conclusion to the much-loved Cold War drama about the complex marriage of two KGB spies posing as Americans in the 1980s. Season six picks the action back up as Philip (Matthew Rhys) and Elizabeth (Keri Russell) shelve their arrangements to move back to the Soviet Union with their children.