The team at Aardman is back with Shaun the Sheep, another endlessly
delightful animal romp based on the 2007 television series. Written
and directed by Mark Burton and Richard Starzak, it’s a bunch of cute,
Claymated mishaps as farm kid Shaun tries to chill in the big city,
only to have The Farmer end up with a head injury, memory loss and
sudden career as a hairstylist to the famous (he shears the
hair…like sheep). And as with most British animated creature romps
there is an evil containment officer who hates all animals at a
murderous level. For these nearly wordless 90 minutes—Shaun the Sheep makes Minions look like a David Mamet script—Burton and Starzak let
the animation do the work; like all Aardman productions its frames are
densely packed with sight gags, callbacks and wonderfully expressive
characters (even a bunch of similar-looking sheep). There’s no
head-thumping moralizing to be found here—this ain’t Pixar—except for
maybe “help your friends,” which is quite enough to hang a charming
film upon.
This article appears in Jul 30 – Aug 5, 2015.
