Review of Shaun the Sheep Movie (2015) by Jerome K — 09 Aug 2015

When Shaun's plan to get all the animals a day off goes spectacularly wrong, the farmer ends up in the big city alone and with no idea who he is, and it's up to Shaun and the gang to find him and make him remember, while dodging an especially overzealous animal control officer. This is as much of a plot as you get, and as much as you need in this whimsically charming children's comedy from Aardman.

Closely based on the television series of the same name, Shaun the Sheep is built around simple storytelling and simple pleasures, as befitting its target audience. However simple in this case should not be confused with dumb. The story may not be any more complex than that of a Saturday morning cartoon, but every minute has been packed with humorous details and charming visuals, like a Mr. Hulot's Holiday for the kiddie set.

Slapstick and sight gags are constant and frequently hilarious. They range from simple trip and fall gags and funny animal faces to elaborate sequences that build and build with one thing after another going wrong until everything is delightful chaos. Oddly for a children's movie, the best of these gags involves a man with his head stuck up a horse's rear, though thankfully not a real horse's. There is the occasional burping or flatulence based joke, but far less than in most other contemporary kids' movies.

What's striking in its absence is spoken dialog, or at least any that's intelligible. The people talk, but it all comes out mumbled like the adults in those old Peanuts cartoons. Not that this is a problem. In the absence of spoken words, the characters frequently mime out their thoughts and intentions in a manner that would make Marcel Marceau proud. And it's just as well that they don't talk, because no words could be as good as the befuddled facial expressions of the city dwellers watching the sheep go by disguised as people, nor could they have improved the spectacle of the villain being seduced by two sheep dressed as a young lady.

If Shaun the Sheep is in some ways old fashioned with its simple narrative and stop motion animation it can also be remarkably modern, as when the amnesiac farmer becomes a social media sensation, being reimagined by the internet into the image of Wolverine, Nyan Cat, and an Obama campaign ad. And while kids will delight in watching a cow being launched over the Moon Inn, their parents can take pleasure in references to Live and Let Die, Donald Trump's toupe, and I swear I'm not making this up; Breaking Bad.

Like a Roadrunner cartoon crossed with Babe, Shaun the Sheep is hilarious, charming, and refreshing straightforward in its approach to storytelling. It will delight small children and adults alike. In short it's everything one would expect from Aardman.