Early Man - review

One minute into Nick Park's new Aardman animation Early Man, a meteor hits the Earth killing off the dinosaurs yet leaving cavemen alive and miraculously unharmed with a football shaped meteorite to covet and play games with.
Not only does that meteor wipe out two dinosaurs (revealed in the end credits to be called Ray and Harry, in one of the film's few deft touches) but any chances of a fish-out-of-water storyline where a Stone Age Caveman must struggle to interact with the dawning of a new Bronze Age are also gone in sixty seconds.
For Early Man is actually nothing more than a prehistoric tribute to the Beautiful Game. It's no coincidence that the film lasts 90 minutes, the same length as a match.
Even if the takeaway from the first couple of minutes could be that the only people interested in football are neanderthals, it is clear that Park has an affection for football. One can even deduce his favourite team is probably Arsenal given that the characters who is the most proficient at the sport is called Goona.
There was certainly huge potential here. The primitive Stone Age vs the wealth of the Bronze Age in a match for the valley? It's an underdog story as strong as Leicester City's in the Premiership.
An early scene in the Bronze Age market with shops like Flint Eastwood and food stalls like Jurassic Pork showcased gags are sharp as flint and potential for jokes about the early men adapting to this new age but they are shown the red card in a game of two halves in favour of tropes such as training montages and bad sports puns as tired and old as the savages playing the game.
Talented voices like Tom Hiddleston (doing his best French Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail) give it their best shot but they are in a league of their own and let down by a script that is second division at best.
Aardman had a open goal in front of them. Instead Early Man is sent for an early bath!

1 star

The Unbeatables - review

Missing an open goal by arriving after the World Cup but sneaking in just at the start of the Premier League season, The Unbeatables was an incredibly Argentinian animation about fussball but unfortunately any sense of fun or enjoyment is lost in translation thanks to an English dub that rewrote the dialogue to fit with a British footballing perspective (despite the fact the town is undeniably Latin American).

Not only must fussball wizard Amadeo put together a team of Mighty Ducks-style misfits and magical fussball players (whose powers are unexplained beyond the tear of a child) to save the town in a football match against former bully-turned-Ronaldo-esque superstar Flash, but he must also try and win the heart of his first love Lara which is difficult when told that his rival has... and i quote verbatim from the film... Taken her with his chopper"! Talk about foul play.

An own goal of a film as lethargic and disorganised as Manchester United playing under Van Gaal.

1 star

Rio 2 - review

Having never seen the original Rio, there was some quick Wikipedia-ing during the adverts to find out what I'd missed and was relieved to see that it was not much other than your standard fish out of water (or bird out of cage) scenario so it would be easy enough to follow.

The neurotic, domesticated bird who has moved to Rio and learnt to fly and had children with the last female Blue Macau now has to deal with moving to the Amazon (not Amazon.com but that might have been funnier) when they discover a secret tribe of Macaus.

All of the voice return for the sequel so that must have been in their contracts unlike a certain Orange Wednesdays advert from a couple of years ago!

Not only did they pack in an inflated voice cast but they unwisely attempted to squeeze in too many subplots.

There is Blu attempting to win Jewel's father's respect; the handsome ex-boyfriend which promoted jealousy; the Ferngully/Avatar "outsider joins tribe to defeat threat to environment"; a Cockatoo revenge plot; Amazon's Got Talent auditions; the list is endless and no subplot is given the opportunity to be fully fleshed out resulting in an uneven mess.

At first I was surprised that Rio 2 wasn't released in June/July to coincide with the World Cup but I realised that a) Fox needed something to capitalise on the Easter holiday market and b) this film is possibly anti-football.

I say that because the home of the blue Macaus which is under threat from loggers is situated in Manuas. Now Manuas is where they have built a brand new football stadium which has been beset by problems ahead of the World Cup and the England game that will play there.

Are the loggers in the film there to bulldoze the land to make way for the football stadium? Or am I reading too much into the film?

Either way, with a plot stuffed fuller than a taxidermist's menagerie and prioritising random musical interludes that feel shoehorned in now Anne Hathaway has won an Oscar for Les Mis over jokes, the desire for any more Rio films is as endangered as the titular blue macau.

1 star