SHORT TAKE:
Adorable, funny, family friendly, typical sports outing about an underdog cavemen team playing soccer against a more sophisticated "Bronze Age" team to win their valley back, all brought to us by Nick Park and friends, the creators of SHAUN THE SHEEP!!!
WHO SHOULD SEE IT:
If you like 
Wallace and Gromit or 
Shaun the Sheep or 
Chicken Run or 
The Wrong Trousers or…. oh EVERYBODY!!!
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LONG TAKE:
What do the fantasy franchises: Harry Potter, The Avengers, Game of Thrones and……. Wallace and Gromit have in common? Wallace and Gromit????!!!!
The answer is: Early Man.
Early Man is an adorable plasticine animation feature length movie brought to you by the same instigators, led by 
Nick Park, who created The Wrong Trousers, and 
The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
With tongue firmly planted in cheek, the story is spun about the lives of a group of 
Cavemen who were forced into the lone habitable spot by a meteor which devastated the rest of the known Earth. 
Their valley is lush and green, where all about them is the 
Badlands: with dangerous mutant animals, harsh rocky ground, and 
volcanos. The Badlands looks a bit like I'd imagine the 
Wembley Stadium parking lot after an EFL Championship game. 
But there are a couple of silver linings. Not only did the meteor strike carve out at least this one fertile area but the meteor, itself, also gave them the template for history's first football. 
By that, for those of you reading in America, 
I mean soccer. But the Brits call it football, so there it is.
Fast forward a couple "eras" and 
Dug (voiced by Eddie Redmayne – Newt Scamander from the "Harry Potter" world of Fantastic Beasts) and the tribe of which he is a member, happily lives on fruits, nuts and the odd rabbit 
(which said presented rabbit is about as catchable as Bugs Bunny so, in effect, they are de facto vegetarians). 
But Dug is ambitious – he wants to hunt mammoths………!
But that's not what the story is about. Their idyll is interrupted when 
Lord Nooth (voiced by The Avengers' Tom Hiddleson) 
sporting an impenetrable guise of Italian accent, 
comes upon the scene with equipment made of the bronze which he has mined from his nearby kingdom.
Dug challenges them to a game of soccer/football to win their valley back. Completely outmatched, 
Dug's group has no equipment, no training, no experience and doesn't even know the rules, but his chutzpah gets the attention of a local girl, 
Goona (voiced by Game of Thrones' Maizie Williams) from the Bronze kingdom who coaches Dug's tribe in exchange for a spot on the team. 
Nick Par, the creator, even lends a hand — or voice — for the emotive and communicative grunts and snorts of Dug's intelligent pig, 
Hognob.
The story is a pretty formulaic case of underdog team goes up against 
much better players with nothing but a good cause, lots of heart, and a ringer. We've seen the like in everything from The Karate Kid (karate) to Facing the Giants (American football) to Bad News Bears (baseball) to Mystery Alaska (hockey) and Balls of Fury (ping pong), and it works — every — time because, as Patton put it so well – "Americans love a winner" and 
everyone loves the underdog because in them we all find inspiration. 
But this time it's played for laughs, parodying the sport, the genre, 
diva professional players, sports announcers, a "win one for the Gipper" moment, 
a hen pecked husband, you name it.
It's a clean, gentle, lovable movie that kids will enjoy for the 
claymation/plasticine animation and adults will appreciate for the pokes at the cliches. 
While there is a good deal of spoofing and teasing, there's not a mean spot in 
Nick Park's entire imaginative brain.
The cast list is like an old home week of favorite kids' characters, especially from the Harry Potter franchise. So when you take your kids you can happily point out that 
Eddie Redmayne is both Dug and
Newt Scamander. 
Timothy Spall, who voiced 
Chief Bobnar also moonlighted as 
Peter Pettigrew. 
Mark Williams, who does the voice for 
Barry, was also 
Mr. Weasley.
Miriam Margolyes, who voices Queen Oofeefa was also 
Professor Sprout. And 
Tom Hiddleson is 
Lord Nooth and
Loki! 
I'll let you figure out how to explain
Maisie Williams' stint in Game of Thrones. 
But, if it helps, she was also in a handful of Dr. Whos.
Early Man is available on Amazon now. So go watch this cute movie that will be delightful to kids, footballers, adults, fans of Wallace and Gromit, Harry Potter afficianados, pig farmers, rabbits, cavemen ………………
A little over a year ago I created a post alluding to a short I had written for a competition. While the competition fell through a 6 minute video was produced by a truly lovely man named 
Robert Campbell through his business CCS Video in England. Also volunteering their time and talents were 
Alice Ryan and 
Kristian Evans as lead actors and 
Tony Maas in a supporting role. My dear friend 
Stuart White (published author and screenwriter par excellence – see his page on us.imdb.com which has only some of his accomplishments) and his best friend, the incredibly clever and brilliant photographer, 
Dave Thorpe graciously and generously showed up to lend support and encouragement as my representatives, as the trip to England for this was just not practically possible for me at the time. Also lending their time and talents to see this project to fruition were: aerial cinematographer and production assistant Roger Allen, assistant director and sound engineer James Skinner, production assistant Michael Winborne, composers Dimitrs Keramidakis, and Enrique Cervera, as well as the kind cooperation of City West Homes.
I will be grateful to all of these people – most of whom I will likely never meet – for the rest of my days, for bringing to life the singular vision I had and breathing life into characters which were only ephemeral specters in my head and words on a page, until these wonderful people created this brief moment which I now share.
While it is too large to place on this blog, the site for accessing this film is here: Neverland.
