Movie Review: Shaun the Sheep Movie

Shaun the Sheep Movie/Aardman Animation/Dir. by Mark Burton & Richard Starzak/Rated PG/85 min.

In the early and mid-nineties, Aardman studios gained prominence with a series of animated shorts built around the characters Wallace and Gromit.  These shorts were critically acclaimed, award-winning, and extremely popular, particular in Aardman's homeland of England.  The third short in the series, A Close Shave, introduced a new character, a mischievous little sheep named Shaun.  He was popular enough to get his own BBC t.v. series and now that series has received the big screen treatment.  However, unlike the average t.v. cartoon-to-feature length project, Shaun the Sheep Movie is not only one of the finest feature length Aardman films, it's one of the most delightful, charming, and consistently hilarious films of the year.

Shaun and all of his friends at Mossy Bottom Farm, on a vaguely English countryside, have gotten into a bit of a rut.  The Farmer has aged from a hip young man who likely has an extensive vinyl collection of The Smiths to a balding, single farmer with a paunch who has dedicated himself to his animals and, by extension, an exacting schedule.  When the animals decide they need a break from the routine, they get The Farmer to take an extended sleep (by means far too funny for me to spoil here) and put him in a camper trailer so they can make use of the amenities of his house.  Unfortunately, a series of unfortunate events leave that camper trailer on a random street in The Big City and The Farmer with amnesia.  It's up to the ragtag group of farm animals to find him and restore things to their proper order.  

The plot of Shaun the Sheep Movie is breezy and simple, but the humor is surprisingly sophisticated.  The movie is told with a visual spark and not a single line of dialogue.  Told from the point of view of animals, the humans mumble incomprehensible gibberish and the animals communicate via "baas and "barks" and delightfully animated expression.  It's as if Aardman decided to remake Ferris Bueller's Day Off with the comic sensibility of Charlie Chaplin, populated by British livestock.

This is a short review, but this film doesn't require a long, drawn-out meditation.  It is, quite simply, one of the best movies of the summer.  A short, surprising, delightful, frothy little film to cleanse the pallet of world-ending, special-effects driven blockbusters.  Hopefully, the public will discover this little gem.  I'd love to see it become as successful financially as it is creatively.

Grade: A