Shaun the Sheep Movie, Review: Shaun is on

An animated comedy from a non Pixar/Disney/Dreamworks DNA, Shaun the Sheep could be the mouse that roared. Just above 80 minutes long, this Aardman Animations (Bristol, UK) production provides plenty of laughs in the ‘stop motion’ technique of old-style animation. Humans, animals, birds, fish, cars, buses and an entire city are all ‘cartoonised’ to come across as credible, endearing and detestable, according to the storyline. What’s more, Shaun the Sheep Movie goes one step further, and does away with dialogue, restricting all conversations to gibberish, which sounds like recordings of normal dialogue played in reverse. It does not shy away from using songs and theme music pieces, however, incorporating as many as 26 snatches of them.

Shaun is a mischievous sheep, living with his flock, at Mossy Bottom Farm. Tired of the routine of life on the farm, he hatches a plan for a day off, tricking the sheep farmer into going back to sleep, by counting the sheep jumping over and over and over. However, the trailer, in which they put the farmer to bed, to keep him away from their shindig, accidentally rolls away, taking him all the way into the big city. Bitzer, the farmer's sheep-dog, goes after him on a rescue mission, ordering the sheep to stay on the farm.

In the city, a heavy object falls on the farmer’s head, and he is hospitalised. It is discovered by the doctors that he has become amnesiac. Unaware of who he is, he leaves the hospital, eventually, wandering into a designer salon, where he sees a hair-trimmer/shearer, and it strikes a bell. He proceeds to cuts the hair of a celebrity, who has had a terrible hair-day, as if he was shearing a sheep. The celebrity loves his new look, which leads the farmer to a new career, as the mysterious hair stylist, ‘Mr X’.

Meanwhile, the sheep find life impossible without the farmer, so Shaun sneaks on a bus to the city; the rest of the flock follows him, in the next bus. He manages to disguise them as people, with the help of stolen woolen clothes, and acrobatic balancing. They begin looking for the farmer, but Shaun is captured by Trumper, an over-zealous animal-control worker. Shaun is reunited with Bitzer in the animal lock-up, and with the help of a feral dog, called Slip, who looks like a large rodent, they escape.

Shaun the Sheep Movie, which began as a BBC TV series of seven-minute episodes, in 2007, does credit to the animation studio that made it with great passion, Aardman, creators of Creature Comforts and The Pirates! In An Adventure with Scientists! Basic inputs come from Nick Park, the first Aardman animator, who also established the style of wordless story-boarding without even indicative dialogue. Richard Starzak, who helmed as many as 33 episodes on TV, has co-written and co-directed the screen adaptation, along with Mark Burton.

Richard ‘Golly’ Starzak (real name Richard Goleszowski, and identified on the Aardman website as such, even now), was working on a feature film with Dreamworks that never happened, before he came on board at Aardman. It took about three years for Golly and the team to complete the Shaun movie, which, considering the speed at which stop-motion animation is normally done, is amazingly fast. He reveals, “It takes a whole day, on average, to complete just two seconds of footage.” Mark Burton worked on Curse of the Were-Rabbit, and on additional material for Chicken Run. These led to Curse of the Were-Rabbit and then Madagascar, culminating in the big break, Shaun.

As writers-directors, the duo exhibit a keen sense of literary humour, bringing in kindergarten school clichés, like ‘counting sheep makes you fall asleep’, and ‘the cow jumped over the moon’. The counting ploy is works so well that they use it twice, and get away with it. A cow jumps over a signpost on which is written, The Moon. If anybody tried to crack jokes of this kind a group of acquaintances, he/she would become the butt of endless ridicule. In this film, however, they are cleverly woven into the plot. Incidents are occasionally stretched to accommodate sequential comedy, and the restaurant scene is an amalgam of the silent comic films of the 1930s and the early comic caper talkies of the 1940s, with a dash the Peter Sellers films of the late 60s and 70s.

Neither the farmer nor the animal gang are made to look heroic, escaping their doom by sheer wits and the skin of their teeth. In an age of comic-book super-heroes, this grounded-to-the-earth approach is a welcome departure. Several engaging pieces of comic suspense come in the facility where the ‘contained’ animals are incarcerated, particularly the chalk-picture on the wall and the repeated stills of a ferocious dog, with a ‘pasted’, perennial growl, who is never seen in motion, but whose ruthless revenge remains a fearful possibility. You might wonder about the need to dump dialogue, yet is must be said that one never really misses it. Writing is used instead of speech, in a few instances, without compromising the concept of a ‘silent movie’. Starzak and Burton’s ode to the cliff-hanger climax is a fresh, new take on the age-old trick-of-the trade.

Omid Djalili gives voice to the villain, the Trumper, John Sparkes plays the farmer as well as Bitzer, and Justin Fletcher speaks for Shaun and Timmy. All are reputed dubbing artistes. Sean Connelly manages to deliver half-a-dozen interpretations. Also in the dubbing team are Burton’s son Henry, and Starzak himself. Couldn’t miss the name of Dhimant Vyas as Hospital Consultant’s voice, when the extremely long end credits rolled past. How does one evaluate grunts and Babelian speech as performances? The team does its job creditably, is all one can say. Ilan Eshkeri (British; Stardust, The Young Victoria, Kick-Ass) composed the easy-on-ear music for the film.

Shaun’s first appearance on screen was in 1995, for just six minutes, in Wallace & Gromit’s third short feature, A Close Shave. The sheep’s ears, arms and legs are made of silicone, while his eyes are beads. Plasticine is used for his eyelids, and that famous woolly coat is from material found in regular textile shops. All this adds up to a lovable, flat-faced brat, who will go to any reasonable length to save his master.

Conceived as seven minute episodes, Shaun’s adventures and misadventures keep you involved in what amount to 12 TV episodes, duration-wise. Kids will have a ball watching it on the big screen, while adults might chuckle self-consciously. For both, nevertheless, a good time is on.

Rating: ***

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_4vs0nCCUI