When you’ve got WALLACE & GROMIT, CHICKEN RUN and SHAUN THE SHEEP on your Stop-Motion Animation resumé, the bar’s set awfully high. And that’s a problem for director Nick Park and the Aardman Animations crew on this allegorical tale of indigenous peoples (here ‘backward’ Cave Men) fighting the Conquering Horde (Bronze Age Roman Empire types) in hopes getting off the reservation and back to Happy Valley. Lovable characters, clever settings & devices, with plenty of kid-friendly physical gags, but something’s missing in the basic set up. And making the whole second half a winner-take-all football/soccer match proves less comically productive than hoped; and far less period specific than it ought to be. Did story development take place in some Aardman echo chamber with no one noticing the Emperor was wearing no clothes. Where’s that truth-telling little kid when you need him?
DOUBLE-BILL: It’s got a lousy rep, but Ringo Starr, Dennis Quaid & Shelley Long give good, dumb fun in CAVEMAN/’81. OR: Buster Keaton intercuts THREE AGES (Cave Man; Roman Era; Modern Times) in his wonderful first feature from 1923. Here, the gags are specific to each period, though there’s a touch of Pre-Historic Baseball, and even some Stop-Motion animation for Buster and a ‘commuter’ dinosaur. Best on KINO or try this youtube LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e468Z0tplFI
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