This year has already seen the release of three superior films for children—The Breadwinner, Paddington 2, and Mary and the Witch’s Flower. These movies teem with visual and narrative imagination, alerting young viewers to the medium’s rich potential. They also refuse to condescend to their viewers: the films are free of the sort of infantile humor and emotional underscoring one finds in less-inspired children’s fare; moreover, they achieve a complexity of detail that requires a certain amount of visual literacy. These are movies that adults can enjoy alongside children—the pleasures they offer are ultimately ageless.
The chief disappointment of Early Man is that the filmmakers set up such an interesting, explorable world only to use it as a backdrop for a formulaic sports comedy. Who cares if cavemen could play soccer? Not that I expected the film to teach a viable lesson in primitive civilization, but I suspect that the filmmakers could have generated a more compelling story by drawing on facts about the period than by rewatching The Bad News Bears. Far too much of Early Man concerns the characters in training and then playing the climactic game—things that could take place at any time. Many of the visual details are fun; as in the Flintstones cartoons, there are plenty of gags that imagine primitive versions of modern technology. (I particularly enjoyed seeing the tribal chief use a large insect as if it were an electric razor.) Yet these sights aren’t enough to compensate for the paucity of narrative detail.
