A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon

Stop-motion ani­ma­tion has always had a reach-out-and-touch qual­i­ty that you just don’t get from tra­di­tion­al line-drawn or dig­i­tal­ly com­posed equiv­a­lents. A sig­nif­i­cant ele­ment of Shaun the Sheep’s charm is feel­ing like you could almost give his wool­ly coat a lit­tle pat, which pre­sum­ably also helps with toy sales. Start­ing out as a sup­port­ing char­ac­ter in the Wal­lace & Gromit short A Close Shave, smart and mis­chie­vous Shaun has worked his way through his own TV series and now a sec­ond full-length fea­ture – all with­out bleat­ing a sin­gle word.

The bur­bling dia­logue-free sto­ry­telling means rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple child-friend­ly plots, sus­tained by a steady flow of sight gags, as the first Shaun the Sheep movie bus­ied itself with a res­cue nar­ra­tive tem­plate famil­iar from Toy Sto­ry 2. Sec­ond time around, Shaun and the Mossy Bot­tom gang find their for­tunes entwined with an alien vis­i­tor, who just wants to return to their dis­tant home plan­et. More than a few nods to E.T. for adult view­ers who grew up on Spiel­berg, then, and it cer­tain­ly plays on parental sep­a­ra­tion anx­i­eties in a time-hon­oured cel­lu­loid fash­ion hark­ing back to Disney’s Bambi.

Main­ly though, the tone is more frol­ic­some than fret­ful. Unfold­ing in delight­ful hand-made set­tings from farm­yard to big city and the sin­is­ter HQ of the (ahem) Min­istry of Alien Detec­tion, it has open-heart­ed Shaun bond­ing with boun­cy extrater­res­tri­al Lu-La over a shared desire to get one over on the forces of author­i­ty. First they need to find the latter’s miss­ing fly­ing saucer, while at the same time the Farmer has his faith­ful hound Bitzer and the rest of the flock build­ing a theme-park to con­vert the area’s ris­ing UFO-fever into funds for a new com­bine harvester.

There’s just enough going on to sus­tain 86 min­utes of ami­able fluff, though the char­ac­ter design of Lu-La, which seems to blend dog­gie, fishy and Tele­tub­bie ele­ments, proves rather less love­able than the rest of the round, wool­ly sheep and their intrigu­ing­ly skewed side­ways smiles. This being Aard­man, the var­i­ous giz­mos and bits of farm-machin­ery prove hap­pi­ly ram­shackle, while the out­er-space ele­ments have a low-tech com­ic-book vibe even more rudi­men­ta­ry than Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks.

All the slap­stick prat­falls are beau­ti­ful­ly timed and briskly cut togeth­er, while there’s always enough time to scan the frame for deli­cious bits of busi­ness – like the poster for the miss­ing dog clad in the same hi-viz pro­tec­tive gear as his gov­ern­ment sci­en­tist mas­ter, or the com­pe­ti­tion in the farm­ing mag­a­zine entic­ing view­ers to win their own weight in muck. There are a few moments of strain and not every gag is com­e­dy gold, yet over­all it cer­tain­ly tick­les the cross-gen­er­a­tional fun­ny bone and Shaun him­self, irre­press­ibly naughty yet affect­ing­ly open-heart­ed, remains a fluffy icon for young and old alike.