Skip to content
Link copied to clipboard

'Shaun The Sheep': Big summer laughs from Aardman

Animals head to the big city to retrieve a lost farmer in ‘Shaun The Sheep,’ a funny claymation feature from Aardman Studios in England

WHILE "Trainwreck" and "Ted" spark debate this summer as to who's funnier, men or women, the correct answer turns out to be "sheep."

For wall-to-wool laughs, you can't top "Shaun the Sheep," a consistently and sometimes prodigiously amusing claymation cartoon from Aardman studios, in England.

The story: Farm animals grow tired of their rustic routine, so they put the farmer to sleep (the sight of sheep jumping sequentially over a fence hits humans like a massive dose of Tylenol PM), and plan to treat themselves to an unsupervised day of fun.

The day-off goes awry, of course, and the farmer ends up in the big city with a big case of amnesia.

The sheep (prompted by leader Shaun) initiate search and rescue, are helped by the world's homeliest stray dog, and get hunted by a demented animal-control officer.

"Shaun" is essentially a silent film, and the need to present the story and characters in purely visual terms pays considerable creative dividends here.

Perhaps there's something about the tactile, hands-on process of shaping clay characters that stokes the imagination of stop-motion animators - the density of the jokes/puns/inventions here is a wonder, given the labor-intensive nature of the process.

"Shaun The Sheep" makes no grand claim, like "Inside Out" to describe the range of human emotion, but it feels more richly visual, more informed by the internal "reality" of its animated components.

The addled farmer, for instance, retains nothing of his former life except his sheep-shearing skills, which leads to an inadvertent second career as a celebrity hair stylist, a seemingly modest premise that yields an impressively large supply of jokes.

And children will find something classically resonant in the story - a desire for chaos and independence, balanced with the reassurance of order and security. (The movie, like Aardman itself, is also very British - the happy ending is achieved when everything is returned to its proper place.)

The animals' confusion at the overwhelming sights and sounds of the city will appeal to a child's own dislocation - the upended rituals of a too-fancy restaurant, for instance, are the source of many laughs.

And there is wisdom, as well. Half the job of being a grown-up human, we see, can be accomplished simply by pretending to be one.

Shaun the Sheep has had supporting roles in Aardman's famous "Wallace and Gromit" cartoons, and has been spun off to star in a series of short films.

This is his first feature film, one marked by the drollery of quintessential Aardman, with a bit of a quicker tempo, a nod to contemporary audiences that just might help it find a larger one.

Online: ph.ly/Movies