Early Man

Story

Early Man is a claymation film by the creators of Wallace & Gromit and Chicken Run.

The central character is Dug (voice of Eddie Redmayne) who lives with his funny and happy tribe in a remote and lush valley sitting within a large crater that was formed when an asteroid smashed into the Earth millions of years earlier. Until this point, the tribe has been blissfully unaware of the rest of the human population. One day, their peaceful valley is infiltrated by soldiers riding in on the back of armoured mammoths. The soldiers chase out the stone-age tribe as they take over the valley in the hunt for metals to mine. Dug finds himself transported to a large and bustling bronze-age metropolis ruled by the comically evil and greedy Lord Nooth (voice of Tom Hiddleston). In a mad-cap chase, Dug races through the city and mistakenly ends up running right onto the football pitch where he is thrown into the role of goal keeper. When the team discovers he is no football player but in fact a stone-age caveman they are outraged. Dug bravely stands up in front of the crowd and demands that his tribe be given the chance to play football against the reigning champions. If they win, they will be able to return to their valley in peace, but if they lose they will be forced to work down in the mines.

Now Dug must return to his tribe and teach them how to play football in the hope they can win the game, but it’s not as easy as he imagines. They may not be the most skilled players, but their strength is that they are a great team with a united goal. Will Dug and his team be able to win the game and get their valley back?

Themes

Football; ancient man; displaced people; colonialism; wealth and greed

Violence

There is some mild animated violence in this movie including:

Slapstick violence for comedic effect, such as people falling and bumping their heads, running into each other, whacking each other with objects.
Bronze-age soldiers enter the stone-age settlement and shoot at the people with bows and arrows whilst riding armoured mammoths.
The stone-age people attempt to hunt a rabbit, capturing it and tying it up ready to be eaten.
Scenes of tribes fighting each other with clubs and punching each other.

Sexual references

There are some mild sexual references in this movie, including:

One of the stone-age women makes comments about liking the football players’ short shorts.
One of the star football players winks suggestively as he says that he likes to ‘tackle’.

Alcohol, drugs and other substances

Nothing of concern

Nudity and sexual activity

There is some mild nudity in this movie and toilet humour, including:

One of the football players runs onto the field with no clothes on and stands there with an object strategically placed to hide his private parts. The crowd laughs.
There is a cave drawing of a team of footballers with their pants pulled down to ‘moon’ the other team, showing their bottoms.

Product placement

None of concern in the film but tie-in merchandise is likely

Coarse language

There is some mild coarse language in this movie that young children might imitate, including:

Crap, moon (show your bottom), bum, old-bird.
There are also some questionable terms used for the stone-age tribe that are offensive and used as insults by the colonisers, such as ‘savages’ and ‘primitives’.

Ideas to discuss with your children

Early Man is a very entertaining movie with great stop-motion animation, witty one-liners and plenty of humour that both adults and children can enjoy. There are some violent and scary scenes that might upset very young children and some language that parents would prefer their children not to imitate, but otherwise it is a family-friendly movie.

The main messages from this movie are that working together as a team is much stronger than just looking out for yourself and that forcing people to move off their ancestral land for financial gain is bad.

Values in this movie that parents may wish to reinforce with their children include:

Bravery, team work, caring about other people in your community and fighting for what you believe in

This movie could also give parents the opportunity to discuss with their children attitudes and behaviours, and their real-life consequences, such as.

Colonialism, displacement of people, wealth and corruption, cultural stereotypes.