I will confide in the reader for a moment. I had a childhood fear of Aardman Animations. Yes, the claymation production studio that brought harmless imaginations to stop-motion life, including Wallace and Gromit and Chicken Run.
It all horrified me. Don’t ask me why, I don’t know how the things that scared me did. How did monsters come to be accused of hiding under the bed? They were things for us as kids not to know and not to find out, with neither a rhyme nor reason. Whether it was its rougher edges as opposed to the pristine looks of computer animation, or the slightly humanoid, slightly doll-like rumpled shirts and bulging eyes that have become its signature, Aardman was the deep dark part of my soul that ate me alive, and I was terrified by it.
As irrational as the mind of a kid can seem, sometimes habits don’t leave you. If you used to push lima beans off your plate when you were little, who knows? You might stay away from them until you’re forty. And just as with me, I have not gone back to Aardman. I haven’t felt that I’ve needed to, or I haven’t gotten the time to, or whatever. Maybe I really have had a repressed fear of the studio in the back of my mind for all this time.
But then again, maybe all you need to do to patch up the weird parts of your childhood is to go back. Shaun the Sheep Movie looked kind of cute after all, even when I associated the appearance with memories of hiding behind the couch. And maybe, if you’re open, your entire perspective will take the flip side.
For example, I have forgiven Aardman for everything that (I made it seem like) it did to me in the first five years of my life. Shaun the Sheep Movie is close to brilliant.
Shaun the sheep. Just the name. Just the name, and you’re like, "this is going to be a great movie."
One thing you never appreciate as a wee kid: the process of making animation. Did you question how Nemo was designed and drawn in the production stage? He was just a fish that lived in the ocean. Shaun the Sheep Movie takes this idea to a level higher, one at which I truly respect Aardman for. The art of it is amazing. Every frame is hand-crafted (literally, someone does these things), stirring the clay figures the camera captures into whimsical and moving pictures. I guess this is the case with all stop-motion, but it is never more evident than in this film. You take so many things for granted when you’re witnessing mastery, like flying in a plane or using an oven. Periodically, you think, so how was this even put together? You can’t follow it, nor can you take the time to. The vitality of the motion was maximized for the very reason that you wouldn’t need to think about it. “Shaun” goes full circle when, in the smallest of strokes, it makes us not only familiar with the characters but gets us to love them as well. The animating technique is at the strongest it has ever been.
Shaun the Sheep Movie is a film version of the Shaun the Sheep show, aired in small short specials in the U.K. Never heard of it, but if I had to guess, given the success of the movie, the younger audience of Britain has good taste in television.
Shaun, who is indeed a sheep, lives on a good old-fashioned farm with good old-fashioned farm animals, the required rooster, bratty pigs, and, of course, sheep.
Everybody is far from relaxing. The farmer, the lone human on the farm, has everyone working. He’s not a jerk, more of a father figure to them. But there are jobs to be done, and Shaun and his pals soon grow tired of a repetitive schedule.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the animals could have a break? Shaun is on it. He, with the local flock of sheep, put their plan into action to distract the farmer and get themselves one free day.
They, along with us, think it’s not so much to ask. However, and I won’t spoil here, a few flaws in the operation causes the farmer to get inadvertently sent from the sleepy farmland he and the animals know best to the big city (excellently referred to only as “the big city”).
The movie is about Shaun and his friends, including the hefty but dopey watchdog Bitzer, trying to get their farmer back. This, in my opinion, is a great plot. Shaun the Sheep Movie establishes the animals (although Shaun is obviously the leader, it would be unfair to cut out the rest of the cute creatures out of the picture) as morally-sound critters who want to fix their mistake very early on in the picture, helping us fit to their benevolent goal. But there’s still somewhere to take the movie, like the actual accomplishment of that goal and even the process of finding out the importance of that goal and what it truly means to them. It may start out as a goal to fix things just to fix them, but it soon becomes a more emotional need when they consider the depth their relationships have struck.
And I love the scenery, tying back into the glory of animation here. A classic small-world to big-world switch for the characters presents another world of challenges to sort out. It’s familiar, but it works, especially for a presiding exploration feeling the film has.
Another point: no words. I didn’t know that going in, but to have previous knowledge of that when watching the movie might actually help the viewer to pay attention to the many gimmicks that the speechless characters have to work with. Something minor becomes major when you consider that all of these concepts are expressed without a spoken word.
Shaun is among the most adorable cartoons I’ve seen, but I still don’t think that Aardman can create a completely lovable scoundrel. There’s a nasty animal control worker tracking the sheep around the big city who takes the role of the villain of the movie. For most of the film, he’s the clumsy human who makes the story funny, but around the final confrontation, he’s just a bit… murderous? I get that bad guys aren’t supposed to be cuddly, but his burning desire to seriously mangle our beloved creatures gets a bit dark. I think when all’s said and done, Shaun the Sheep Movie somehow gets a really meaningful moment between the farmer and his sheep amid the peril, although for a second, it’s pretty frightening.
But I really, really liked, and continue to like, this movie. My first time watching it, there was the layer of criticism flooding me and also, more specific to me, the layer of coming to terms with my past and laughing at myself, which both parts the film rectified amazingly. Few things are more effective than a kids movie done right (look at Spielberg). Shaun the Sheep Movie is better than good, not quite great. It’s very good.
