Movie Review: 'Shaun The Sheep Movie'

By KYW Newsradio Movie Critic Bill Wine

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) --- Here's a bit of wool you do want pulled over your eyes.

Based on a British television show, Shaun the Sheep Movie is a stop-motion animated comedy from the claymation studio, Aardman, the makers of the hit television series, Wallace and Gromit, and the fabulously funny feature film, Chicken Run.

The approach here is to pretty much do away with dialogue and depend on sight gags, sound effects, and animal noises to tell the story. So no youngsters will be disenfranchised by wordplay.

Shaun is a bored and rebellious sheep living with his flock at Mossy Bottom Farm and looking for a way to get a day off from the mundane routine. He manages that feat, but in doing so Inadvertently takes the sleeping farmer off to the big city inside a camper trailer.

The farm's sheepdog, Bitzer, Shaun's nemesis, follows them after ordering the rest of the sheep to remain behind on the farm. In the city, the farmer gets conked on the noggin and is diagnosed with amnesia, after which he checks out of the hospital and embarks on a career as a hair stylist, taking advantage of his memories of shearing the sheep without quite realizing the connection between his two identities.

It goes without saying that in this kind of satirical screwball comedy his custom cuts become all the rage and start trending in London. Back on the farm, where life has devolved into chaos, the rest of the sheep realize that they miss the farmer and Shaun, so they follow them to the city, where Shaun manages to disguise them as people. But he's captured by Trumper, the animal control officer, as is Bitzer.

When Shaun eventually encounters the farmer, he no longer recognizes him and Shaun is hurt by what seems like hostility. Then he realizes that the farmer doesn't remember him, so he devises a plan to abduct the farmer and take him back to the farm by placing him upon a fake horse.

And so on...

First-time feature-film writer-directors Richard Starzak and Mark Burton based their screenplay on a story by Burton, which was itself based on the television series of the same name, which was itself based on the TV series, Wallis and Gromit, from which the title character emerged before stealing scenes as a sidekick in Nick Park's Oscar-winning 1995 short, A Close Shave.

Got all that? Anyway, we're the better for it, even if the already brief feature suggests an even shorter, tighter version.

Ultimately, this is a silent comedy, and we sometimes long for helpful or witty dialogue. But marvelously expressive visual gags clear up any narrative confusion.

So we'll shear 2-1/2 stars out of 4 for the clever claymation cartoon and whimsical non-verbal romp, Shaun the Sheep Movie. Is it baaaaaad? Just the opposite.