Film Review: "A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon" (2019).

"Close Encounters of the Furred Kind." This is A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon. This stop-motion animated science fiction comedy film co-directed by Will Becher and Richard Phelan, in their directorial debuts, written by Mark Burton and Jon Brown, based on the characters created by Nick Park, and produced by Aardman Animations. It is the stand-alone sequel to Shaun the Sheep Movie (2015). When an alien possessing strange powers crash-lands near Mossy Bottom Farm, Shaun the Sheep quickly makes a new friend. Together they must run from a dangerous organisation who wants to capture the intergalactic visitor.

In mid September 2015, StudioCanal announced its collaboration with Aardman on a sequel to Shaun the Sheep Movie, marking Aardman's first sequel. In late October 2016, Aardman confirmed a sequel would go into pre production in January 2017, under the working title of Shaun the Sheep Movie 2, with Richard Starzak returning to the director's chair. However, in November 2018, it was announced that Aardman employees Richard Phelan and Will Becher will be co directing the film, with Starzak still attached as director, due to Peter Lord and David Sproxton giving majority of ownership to employees to keep the company independent.

Like a great silent film, the performances creates its pathos and comedy out of the concrete objects being animated, building elaborate gags involving everyday items transformed into Rube Goldberg devices. Sometimes the simplest movies are the best. Case in point: the film, a dialogue-free, non-digitally designed, plain old stop-motion animated film that is hilarious beyond human measure.

Warm, funny, and brilliantly animated, A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon is yet another stop-motion jewel in Aardman's family-friendly crown. The film may be less elaborate than Aardman masterpieces like Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005), but there's still much to enjoy. It's not often you see a cartoon that references both Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Refreshingly for children (but especially for adults), there are no lessons to learn and no faults to admonish. Instead, it's an eighty-seven-minute, dialogue-free distillation of all the innocent fun we wish childhood could be. Playful, absurd and endearingly inventive, this unstoppably amusing feature reminds us why Britain's Aardman Animations is a mainstay of the current cartooning golden age. Though realized on a more modest scale than other Aardman features, the film is still an absolute delight in terms of set and character design, with sophisticated blink-and-you’ll-miss-it detailing to counterbalance the franchise’s cruder visual trademarks. In a bold move that pays off, the movie jettisons dialogue altogether and tells its whole story through barn-animal noises, goofy sound effects, and sight gags so silly they’d make Benny Hill spin in sped-up ecstasy. The effect is contagiously cute. From the company that gave us Chicken Run (2000) and Wallace and Gromit, this adorable tale about a sheep who leads his comrades on a big-city adventure is some of the most pure visual storytelling you’re going to see this year.

Simon says A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon receives:

Also, see my review for Early Man.