Shaun the Sheep Movie
Directed by: Mark Burton & Richard Starzak
Written by: Mark Burton & Richard Starzak
Animation/Adventure/Comedy/Family - 85 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 4 Aug 2015
Written by: Mark Burton & Richard Starzak
Animation/Adventure/Comedy/Family - 85 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 4 Aug 2015
Shaun the Sheep Movie aims at 10 year-olds. It is based on a children’s TV show in Britain. It is stop-motion animation. The main characters are sheep and there is zero dialogue. Absorb all of this information and believe me when I say adults will like Shaun the Sheep better than their children. Adults will smile more often, laugh harder, and enjoy the heck out of this quaint 85 minute ball of fluff.
Created from the folks who brought you Chicken Run (2000) and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005), Shaun the Sheep Movie maintains the same visual aesthetics as its predecessors. Shaun is even a carry-over character from the early Wallace & Gromit short film. Stories about Wallace & Gromit I understand; Wallace speaks and can carry a plot. A flock of sheep that can at best click, chuckle, and shush each other are only expected to graze, not create an amusing narrative and produce perhaps the funniest film of the year.
I’m laughing about it as I write this. There is a scene in the Animal Containment Shelter, aka The Pound, where Shaun is imprisoned, which is perhaps one of the best scenes of the year – and your kids will have no idea why you are almost crying with laughter. Watch for the quick homage to The Silence of the Lambs and then get a load of the dog in the cell directly across from Shaun’s. I am going to make that dog my computer wallpaper.
Created from the folks who brought you Chicken Run (2000) and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005), Shaun the Sheep Movie maintains the same visual aesthetics as its predecessors. Shaun is even a carry-over character from the early Wallace & Gromit short film. Stories about Wallace & Gromit I understand; Wallace speaks and can carry a plot. A flock of sheep that can at best click, chuckle, and shush each other are only expected to graze, not create an amusing narrative and produce perhaps the funniest film of the year.
I’m laughing about it as I write this. There is a scene in the Animal Containment Shelter, aka The Pound, where Shaun is imprisoned, which is perhaps one of the best scenes of the year – and your kids will have no idea why you are almost crying with laughter. Watch for the quick homage to The Silence of the Lambs and then get a load of the dog in the cell directly across from Shaun’s. I am going to make that dog my computer wallpaper.
Co-written and co-directed by Mark Burton and Richard Starzak, Shaun the Sheep Movie is stuffed full of visual sight gags and non-verbal puns. It evokes the feeling of emerging cult classic as folks are going to go back and study the jokes in case they may have missed one. Burton and Starzak could have made the sheep talk or perhaps The Farmer who tends to them, but even The Farmer merely mumbles and grunts. The fact that I am gushing about the high quality of a voiceless sheep movie for kids says a lot about the creativity and inventiveness of these gentlemen.
Shaun, his fellow sheep, Bitzer the dog, and The Farmer enjoy a quiet life in their out of the way world. They have their daily routine revolving around waking up, eating, grazing, the occasional shearing, getting made fun of by the pigs, and then repeating the same routine over and over again. Shaun is bored of the routine and conspires for a day off. The sheep scheme up a plan to make The Farmer fall asleep, an easy feat as all they must do is jump over a fence to induce insomnia, employ the duck to distract the dog, and boom, they have their day off.
A series of unfortunate events occur during the plan’s execution and The Farmer winds up in The Big City with amnesia. He has no idea he is a farmer, has sheep friends, and would not recognize them even if the sheep and dog could somehow locate The Farmer in such a big place. Compounding their frantic search is Trumper, The Animal Container who is very effective at capturing and caging wild animals. The sheep, most of them with distinct characteristics to tell them apart, dress up as humans and do their best to blend into the crowd as they search high and low for The Farmer.
Shaun the Sheep is usually a seven minute episode on Britain’s CBBC. The character remains popular in Britain, the Middle East, and Asia, yet is mostly absent in American culture. Shaun’s anonymity ends now. I have no doubt Shaun and his kin will latch on with American audiences; I am far more certain of it because their parents will not go insane with the movie on repeat in their living rooms, a feat most Disney and Pixar films fail at. Ignore the temptation to skip what at first glance is a silly kid’s film. Shaun the Sheep Movie is superior to almost all recent Disney/Pixar efforts. Don’t forget about that prison scene either; you will laugh for days.
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