It's pretty good for a first animation, I've never animated with stop motion, and I can imagine that it is ridiculously hard and painstaking, especially without proffessional tools.
I would recommend to your friend though, to start doing some very simple exercises to get a handle on the mechanics and techniques of animation - just very simple things like a bouncing ball (both with a rigid ball, and then adding squash and stretch), animating and showing emotion in a sack of flour, to more advanced stuff like a character picking up a heavy box...doing exercises like these, without any story or anything else to worry about, will help him to improve his animation skills for when he wants to make another film.
A couple of books on animation that would really be helpful are The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams, as well as The Illusion of Life by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnson. If your friend can get a hold of these, and read them through, they will help his skills along a great deal.
