Shaun the Sheep Movie

Ok, so maybe it’s not quite as wildly inventive as any of the Wallace and Gromit stuff, but Shaun the Sheep Movie is a great way to spend 85 minutes. It’s so damn charming, fun, funny, sweet, and warm. There’s also something very pleasing about the tactile nature of stop-motion animation to me. Consider that a personal quirk, but trust me, Shaun the Sheep Movie is a great time.

Completely absent of dialog, Shaun the Sheep Movie tells its story entirely through grunts, whistles, visual cues and copious amounts of sight gags. Shaun is bored with his life on the farm, and goes about tricking the farmer into falling asleep and running off to the big city for a holiday. Except, naturally, mishaps pile up one after another, mistaken identities, and general anarchy. Parts of this extended vacation reminded me of the loose cattle tearing through the city in Buster Keaton’s Go West.

The constant bombardment of jokes meant that not all of them will hit. There’s far too many fart jokes for my taste, but I suppose they were trying to appeal to a younger audience with them. Much better are smarter gags like the introduction of various residents in an animal shelter, including a cat paying homage to Hannibal Lecter, a turtle marking days on a wall, and an intensely staring dog. Or another gag which has the sheep causing people to fall asleep by jumping over a gate. An obvious joke, sure, but still gets a giggle for the self-awareness of the sheep in doing it. Praise be to Aardman for creating leisurely paced family entertainments which know that a never-ending barrage of pop cultural riffs is not humor, just laziness. Even in its weaker moments, Shaun the Sheep Movie is kind of thing we need more of from American animation.