Early Man

Watching Early Man, I constantly had the feeling that the completely untapped potential that lay dormant in this prehistoric adventure about the origins of (not only) football was everywhere. Alongside this, it lacked a funny scene that would have really amused me – in most cases, they were just underdeveloped hints. As a result, it was a pretty big disappointment for me. (27/08/2019)

The disappointment is huge, but Nick Park just failed to do it this time. For the first time and I hope for the last time. Early Man is, for my taste, primarily a suspiciously overly infantile film, in which an uncomfortably large amount of humor is that someone falls down, someone punches someone, someone is completely stupid, a gigantic prehistoric carnivorous duck jumps out at someone, and so on. Certainly the best character is the pig Hognob, who wants to play with the ball the whole film and throws eloquent looks all around him, while a mail pigeon is stepping on his toes. Of the plasticine cavemen, almost no one was interesting to me. Not that there are no good jokes in the film, they are there, but I really only had fun during the final game, which so beautifully parodied all kinds of football stereotypes. Finally, I would mention the Czech version, which sadly lacks any spark this time. The Pirates! had Ivan Trojan and Eliška Balzerová in the lead roles and it was great dubbing, but Early Man was not that lucky and the crew got rather lackluster voices and there was no surprising casting. That’s too bad. (28/02/2018)