Shaun the Sheep Movie (2015) [Blu-ray]
Animation | Adventure | Comedy | Family

Feature-length movie following Shaun and his flock of sheep. After their mischievous behaviour gets their farmer in a spot of bother, Shaun and his friends go on a big adventure to the city to save him. While there, they get up to all sorts of shenanigans. Will everyone get back to the farm in one piece?

Storyline: Shaun the sheep is tired of doing the same work at the farm everyday. He decides to take a day off. In order to do that, he needs to make sure the farmer doesn't know. When more happens than they can handle, the sheep find their way in the big city. Now they need to get back to the farm.

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, November 6, 2015 -- Occasionally readers of our reviews here at Blu-ray.com will message me about why this or that release does not feature subtitles, a question I am rarely able to answer as I am not privy to the discussions various labels make as they prepare a release for market. Those for whom English is a second language or who have some kind of hearing disability are often quite exercised about the lack of subtitles and a few have gotten rather—well, intense in their discussions about this issue. And so for any of those folks who have given a cursory glance to the specs on Shaun the Sheep Movie and noticed that there are in fact no subtitles—relax, you won't need any. This delightfully daft film built around the iconic Nick Park character from Wallace & Gromit: The Complete Collection's A Close Shave and his own Shaun the Sheep TV series doesn't sport a single word of actual dialogue, unless you count various grunts, groans and gibberish as something that needs a subtextual identifier like subtitles. Though constructed on a wafer thin plot device that sees Farmer taking an unexpected journey to The Big City where he promptly gets amnesia and becomes a superstar hair stylist to the elite (courtesy of his shearing skills), Shaun the Sheep Movie is sweet, goofy and often very, very funny.

Who among us hasn't risen on a typical work day, thought about the rigors ahead, and kind of wished we had never actually gotten out of bed? The routine of any "normal" day can get to be a bit of a grind (and sometimes more than merely a bit) for the best of us, and that reaction evidently includes sheep, as evidenced by Shaun and the rest of the flock, who have grown tired of Farmer's checklist of "to do" items that he consults daily. The opening sequence of the film makes the parade of days around Mossy Bottom Farm a kind of Groundhog Day procession of "same old, same old", and when Shaun spies an advertisement urging people to "get away", the too smart for his own good sheep starts to wonder if perhaps there's a better way to spend any given 24 hours than exactly the same way any previous 24 hour span has been spent.

What's already remarkable about Shaun the Sheep Movie is how the screenplay by Richard Starzak and Mark Burton makes it effortlessly clear what's going on and what each and every character's motivation is, all without the benefit of any expository dialogue. Farmer seems blithely content to let each day play out exactly as the last, a proclivity shared by his helpmate dog Bitzer (who bears more than a slight resemblance to a certain other Park canine). But both the sheep and pigs on the farm evidently want a little more excitement in their lives. Shaun has a plan (of course), but not so surprisingly, things don't go the way he envisioned.

The lack of traditional dialogue elements does lead to one perhaps slight ambiguity about just exactly when Shaun's madcap plan goes haywire. He instructs the farm animals on what it's going to take to escape Farmer and the strictures of any given day, and the sheep seem to be getting away with it (not to mention just plain old getting away), until Farmer heads them off at the pass. This might be where Shaun has to improvise, or perhaps what happens next was part of the plan all along. One way or the other, Shaun and his fellow sheep start jumping over a fence, and you know what that means for the typical human—nap time. Soon enough Farmer is sawing logs and Shaun and the rest of the flock sequester him away in a trailer. At this point, there's no question that things go horribly, horribly wrong, when the trailer is pushed over a restraining log under its wheel and it begins careening off toward The Big City.

There's a hilarious little moment with the trailer zooming down a country lane that is very reminiscent of some of the shenanigans that sometimes inform the Wallace and Gromit outings, specifically with regard to Gromit's ability to think on the fly. In Shaun the Sheep Movie, Bitzer is understandably horrified to see Farmer, still sleeping peacefully in the trailer, careening off into parts unknown, and so of course tries to stop the trailer. He grabs a door handle, which promptly breaks. But Bitzer, much like Gromit, is a well prepared pooch, and he pulls out a screwdriver to try to screw the darned thing back in, at the same time he's manically trying to hold on to an unstable and fast moving vehicle. The fact that ultimately there is a chain of sheep holding onto him only makes the scene all the funnier.

Farmer actually arrives relatively unscathed in The Big City, at least that is until he actually steps outside of the trailer, which is when a bonk on the head gives the poor guy amnesia. Good old Bitzer is still in attendance, trying to take care of his master, but Farmer ultimately escapes from the hospital he's taken to and through a comedic series of events becomes a star hairdresser. Meanwhile, things back at Mossy Bottom Farm have degenerated mightily, much of which is due to the pigs taking over the farmhouse. Soon Shaun and the rest of the sheep hightail it to The Big City themselves in order to try to return everything to normalcy. Almost immediately upon their entry into the metropolis they catch the attention of obsessive animal control worker Trumper, and much of the rest of the film details the patently lunatic attempts of the sheep to evade Trumper while also attempting to track down Farmer.

There's ridiculousness in huge heaping amounts scattered throughout this film, with both the sheep and Bitzer assuming disguises (the sheep as a "human" family, and Bitzer as a surgeon in the hospital). Meanwhile Trumper starts to go off the deep end (which doesn't stop him from trying to romance several of the sheep who have assumed the "identity" of a flirtatious woman). Efforts to get Farmer to remember who he really is prove initially ineffective, and it seems that everything is going to hell (or at least a rock quarry) in a handbasket, until Shaun's fast thinking saves the day.

What's so charming and dare I say even lovely about Shaun the Sheep Movie is how winningly innocent it all is. In a time when even so-called kids' movies are often filled with a post-modern cynicism, it's beyond refreshing to see a film built around such wonderfully simple characters. While Nick Park may not be a hands on creator with this enterprise, his spirit is all over the film, and that's most definitely a good thing.

Not to put too fine a point on it while also perhaps punning a bit on the film's subtext, there's nothing routine about Shaun the Sheep Movie. Its whimsical plot is a throwback to silent films, as evidenced by this film's complete lack of dialogue. Despite that fact, a lot of the humor is not really traditional slapstick laden sight gags, but often tends to spring squarely from the very well defined characters. Wonderfully inventive and best of all really uncommonly sweet, Shaun the Sheep Movie comes Highly recommended.

[CSW] -3.1- You may think this movie will just be for your little ones, but I laughed and laughed. The Shaun the Sheep TV show has been charming kids for years. But this hilarious stop-motion adventure is so much more than an expanded television episode. As our farmyard heroes venture off into the big city, they have an adventure that provides thrills and spills aplenty even while smothering us in cuddles. As always the Aardman film studio conjures up a deliriously detailed world, juxtaposing scenes of sublime silent-cinema slapstick (there are no words throughout, merely noises) with fleeting nods to Silence of the Lambs and Cape Fear. You will find yourself laughing along with your younglings!
[V4.0-A4.0] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box codes were available at the time of this rental but they are available now.

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