Four stars. Needlessly rated PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.7.15
I’ve eagerly awaited this film
since it was announced in early 2013, and it lives up to every expectation.
Cute, clever, whimsical,
laugh-out-loud funny and even socially conscious. Couldn’t ask for more.
Shaun the Sheep comes from the
claymation wizards at England’s Aardman Animation, best known for Wallace &
Gromit’s various adventures. Indeed, Shaun was introduced in 1995’s Academy
Award-winning W&G short, A Close Shave, where character actor Peter
Sallis (the longtime voice of Wallace) punningly pronounced the name as
“Shorn.”
Shaun was granted his own British
TV series in early 2007, but he didn’t travel to this side of the pond for a
few more years. (Our household became early fans, thanks to a friend and some,
ah, illicit Internet activity.) Shaun is much better known on these shores
today, thanks to the perceptive folks at the Disney Channel.
Heavens, the impish little sheep
even maintains an active social media presence, and has more than 5 million
Facebook friends. Not ba-a-a-a-ad at all...
Ironically, Shaun may be
overtaking Wallace & Gromit in terms of popularity, having thus far starred
in 166 seven-minute shorts (assuming my count is correct). And therein lay the
potential concern, for Shaun fans throughout the world: Could that brief,
dialog-free format — so perfect in every respect — translate successfully to an
85-minute big-screen feature?
Worry not. The transition has
been seamless.
Aside from its entertainment
value, this feature-length “Shaun” is impressive in several other respects. The
engaging storyline unfolds without any dialog; even when human characters
converse, it’s solely in (deliberately amusing) unintelligible mumbles. And yet
the plot is always comprehensible, with solid character development and all
sorts of droll sidebar mischief. (The overly precocious Shaun, with a tendency
to leap into half-baked schemes, always gets into trouble.)
The result, then, is a de facto
silent movie, albeit one with marvelous sound effects and a superlative score
from composer Ilan Eshkeri. He has managed a herculean feat, because the music
essentially never stops. Much the way Howard Shore orchestrated full-blown
symphonies for his Lord of the Rings and Hobbit scores, Eshkeri has
produced a similarly ambitious musical portrait that augments, counterpoints
and even carries the action, from scene to scene.
And yes, folks, you’ll detect
underscore snatches of Shaun’s theme song, most famously sung by Vic Reeves, in
its original pop hoe-down format. My only complaint is that this film never
employs that foot-stompin’ version of the song, instead scrolling the closing
credits to an updated, rap-inflected version by the pop duo Rizzle Kicks. (It’s
cute, but it ain’t the same. So sue me.)
But I digress.
After a short prologue that
details how Shaun (as a little lamb) came to live at the bucolic Mossy Bottom
Farm, the story proper establishes the daily routine that consumes the lives of
Shaun, his flock mates, dutiful guard dog Bitzer, and the never-named Farmer
who watches over them.
Over time, the Farmer’s
meticulous list of chores wears on Shaun, who craves a day off and concocts an
elaborate scheme to trick his human companion into snoozing far longer than
usual. Alas, the plan goes awry and — as a result of a trailer crisis too
comically absurd to explain here — the Farmer winds up hospitalized in the
nearby Big City, having lost his memory after a clonk on the noggin.
Loyal Bitzer follows his master, doggedly
watching the appropriate hospital window (canines not being allowed inside, of
course). Back at the farm, realizing his responsibility for this mess — and
wanting to fix things — Shaun and the rest of the flock embark on a
well-intentioned but ill-conceived rescue mission.
Naturally, everything goes wrong.
What else would you expect, from a title character with the overly imaginative
sensibilities and immaturity of a 12-year-old boy?
Directors/co-scripters Mark
Burton and Richard Starzak display a well-honed sense of whimsy, not to mention
excellent comic timing: an impressive feat, when you consider the difficulty of
achieving expressive, split-second “reaction shots” from manually manipulated
clay figures. (Some numbers, for people who appreciate such things: 157
6.5-inch human figures; 197 sheep puppets, including 27 for Shaun alone; and 58
cameras employed to shoot the action in 33 different production units.)
Burton and Starzak orchestrate
everything brilliantly, with editor Sim Evan-Jones contributing the hilariously
precise slow takes that marked the finest Chuck Jones Warner Bros. cartoons.
Every Aardman drama boasts a vile
and despicable villain, in this case a baleful, burly, square-jawed animal-control
officer dubbed Trumper, who lives to capture unleashed, unlicensed and
unlawfully stray critters. Trumper doesn’t merely capture such beasts; he
“contains” them, cackling cheerfully every time he tosses a fresh catch into
the clink.
And although Trumper ostensibly
works for the local animal shelter, he has no interest in seeing his victims
adopted out. Nor is he choosy; he’s just as willing to stock the cages with
turtles, goldfish and, yes, sheep. (Wait till you see the Hannibal Lecter-esque
cat.)
The primary cast expands further
to include Slip, an adorably ugly stray dog that Shaun meets after a less than
ideal encounter with Trumper. Slip serves as the plucky but pitiful “woeful
orphan” to Shaun’s Chaplin-esque Little Tramp, and the two become an engaging
team.
Most of the rest of the sheep
don’t have names, with the exception of infant lamb Timmy, whose inquisitive,
wide-eyed antics forever derail some of Shaun’s carefully plotted schemes. The
other woolly stand-out is the massive Shirley, whose girth results from
constant eating, and whose size invariably creates fresh problems, when she
gets stuck in something.
Ah, yes; we also mustn’t forget
the Naughty Pigs, a porcine Mossy Bottom trio who love to heckle and torment
Shaun and the rest of the sheep.
Everybody gets a piece of the
action, as Burton and Starzak build their droll narrative to a suspenseful
climax. The action is so seamless, so cleverly constructed, that you won’t even
notice the absence of dialog. Consider how deftly The Artist conveyed its
storyline; I’m also reminded of 2003’s hilariously frenzied animated charmer, The Triplets of Belleville, wherein writer/director Sylvain Chomet achieved
the identically impressive feat of telling a rather complicated story without
any expository chatter.
Burton and Starzak clearly
borrowed from the best; longtime film fans will detect sight gags that feel
like Jacques Tati and Buster Keaton, and — according to the press notes — that
isn’t accidental.
“Comic genius” is the only
suitable phrase, and the saucer-eyed Shaun is ample evidence. Aardman has the
touch, and — as this film amply demonstrates — Wallace & Gromit creator
Nick Park isn’t the only animation maestro in the studio stable. Burton and
Starzak are an equally impressive team.
As often is true of Aardman
productions on this side of the Atlantic, Shaun’s big-screen adventure has
arrived with only modest fanfare, and his typically Brit-wit escapades may be overshadowed
by Meryl Streep’s Ricki Rendazzo and yet another Marvel Comics superhero
adventure (The Fantastic Four), both of which are guaranteed to dominate
screens and media hype this weekend.
More’s
the pity. I’ve often said, in recent years, that many of the best scripts keep
popping up in animated films: a belief that Shaun the Sheep verifies anew.
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