Shaun the Sheep Movie Review

I keep saying that Stop-motion animation is a dying art. Yet I keep finding and reviewing stop-motion animated movies, even new releases. Is it making a comeback? Aardman Animations is the British animation studio known for using stop-motion animation and bringing us films like Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Chicken Run, and The Pirates! Band of Misfits. Their latest film, Shaun the Sheep Movie (2015) is based off of the television series of the same name, whose titular character was introduced in the Wallace and Gromit short A Close Shave (my favorite). Shaun the Sheep Movie is every bit as delightful and charming as anything we've come to expect from Aardman Animations.

Shaun the sheep is tired of doing the same work at the farm every day. He decides to take a day off. In order to do that, he needs to make sure the farmer doesn't know.  A mix up with the Farmer, a caravan and a very steep hill lead them all to the Big City. Shaun and his flock explore the Big City hoping to find their farmer, who is suffering from amnesia. Along the way they buy disguises, dine at fine restaurants and rub elbows with celebrities, all the while attempting to elude an arrogant animal-control officer. It's up to Shaun and the flock to return everyone safely to the green grass of home.

When the Shaun the Sheep television series was started up, Aardman Animations needed to keep the budget down. Manipulating the characters' mouths for stop-motion animation is very time-consuming and gets to be expensive, so the program became dialogue-free and was a huge success. Similarly, Shaun the Sheep Movie doesn't have a single spoken word. It's effectively a silent film the same way The Triplets of Belleville and WALL-E is. There are still sound effects, and characters still make vocal sounds; they just don't say anything. But even without dialogue the meaningful animation is so well done that you can still tell what the characters are thinking or communicating without needing the dialogue. Like most Aardman's films, this one feels both decidedly British and universal. The farmer's Wellington boots and Fair Isle sweater place him squarely in the UK, but the film's dialouge-free format has helped it to appeal to a broad range of counties and ages; there's nothing to dub over or subtitle, so international appeal is inherent.

The humor is largely slapstick and totally silly. I love cartoon physics and slapstick, and this movie is loaded with it! You can easily get a lot of mileage out of a nearsighted farmer and his loyal dog being rescued by a flock of dim-witted sheep. There's also many spoofs inserted here and there that only adults will catch including Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Taxi Driver, The Silence of the Lambs, The Shawshank Redemption, and Breaking Bad. The cone-wearing cat who bears a more than striking resemblance to Hannibal Lecter was one of my favorites. I laughed a lot during this movie and got a big kick out of it. The humor is witty and simple enough to appeal to a broad range of audiences of any age.

Stop-motion animation is different from the much more popular computer animation. It has a sense of realism to it. Sure, I've seen some computer animation that looked remarkably realistic, but it was still digital graphics and lacked something that made it actually real. With stop-motion animation, it is actual photographs of actual objects. Even when it is stylized and cartoonish, it still has a realistic quality that computer animation hasn't quite achieved yet. I like stop-motion animation, especially when it is left in its pure state, without stylistic additions of computer animation as was done in ParaNorman. Shaun the Sheep Movie sticks to its guns and holds true to this century-old style of animation and it is animation perfection.

Shaun the Sheep Movie is cute, warm, fuzzy, funny, and remarkably well animated. I loved it! It's good, clean fun that will appeal to a broad range of audiences of all ages. The slapstick is hysterical, the movie references are a hoot, and the characters are highly lovable. There is not a single negative thing I can say about this movie. I want to see Aardman Animations make more movies like this, which is why I have no misgivings over spending money on a movie ticket to see this Shaun the Sheep Movie. Please go see this in theaters; it's the kind of film we want to encourage studios to make.

Do you have a favorite Aardman Animations movie or short? Comment below and tell me all about it!

Chicken Run Review

The stop motion animation studio that did the Wallace & Gromit shorts took their first stab at a full length motion picture in 2000 called Chicken Run. It was bigger and more elaborate than any of the short films they had done before, and it truly was a remarkable feat of clay animation. It also conveniently happened to be a good movie on top of that.

Having been hopelessly repressed and facing eventual certain death at the chicken farm where she is held, Ginger the chicken (Julia Sawalha) has tried increasingly elaborate and desperate plans to escape. The farm’s owners Mr. and Mrs. Tweedy (Tony Haygarth and Miranda Richardson, respectively) keep their chickens under close surveillance to prevent any escapes. It’s not until Ginger sees a smooth-talking Rhode Island Red rooster named Rocky (Mel Gibson), who literally lands in their midst from out of the sky, that Ginger hatches the idea that the imprisoned chickens could fly away. Rocky needs to wait for his broken wing to mend before he can actually demonstrate how he flew, but time is running out as Mrs. Tweedy decides to move from selling eggs to selling chicken pot pies.

This really was an amazing bit of animation, mostly thanks to the difference in size between the chicken characters and the human ones. The chicken characters are very articulate puppets and the puppets for them were probably around a foot in height. The Tweedys were proportionately larger than the chicken characters, and since the puppets are made out of clay, they would have had to be remarkably heavy and very difficult to articulate. It’s probable that there were foot-tall versions of the human characters when scenes featured only them, but there are several scenes where they interact with the chicken puppets and huge puppets would be needed to interact with them. Consider how the villain Oogie-Boogie in The Nightmare Before Christmas was a large clay puppet that moved and danced seemingly effortlessly. The puppet, itself, weighed over thirty pounds and it kept falling over, forcing animators to reshoot scenes. The Tweedys were easily much bigger than Oogie-boogie compared to the chicken characters. Yet interaction is so seamless you can’t imagine how they could possibly have animated these characters with such a significant size difference. I’m not sure exactly how this was accomplished, but suffice it to say it was done extraordinarily well.

The story is good and well suited for laughs and endearing characters. Ginger and her fellow chickens try hilarious escape stunts that incorporate cartoon physics and slapstick humor. The chickens have varied personalities and are lots of fun. Even the bad guys are funny. There is a scene where Ginger and Rocky are trying to escape the new pot pie making machine’s test run. It’s every bit as action packed and silly as an old Tom and Jerry cartoon. There are sentimental moments and moments of great character development which add a great deal of relatability and charm to the movie.

My only real beef with Chicken Run was the blatant vegetarian and animal rights themes. I mentioned this in my review of The Pirates! Band of Misfits. It makes sense given the nature of the story: chickens living on a chicken farm trying to escape from maniacal farmers. The farm, itself, is designed to look like a concentration camp. This is kind of funny, but at the same time it seems ridiculous to compare the horrors and torture that humans underwent during the holocaust to chickens. Don’t misunderstand; I’m in favor of ethical treatment of animals. Chicken Run never outright tells you that eating meat is evil and you should only eat vegetables, but it’s certainly not subtly hinted at either. There are times the movie gets a bit close to being preachy but never actually does so. I’m still unconvinced, and still love me some fraid chicken. This shouldn’t dissuade viewers from watching Chicken Run; it’s still a very good movie. I simply think the vegetarian theme was a bit much at times.

Chicken Run is a really good movie. Kids will love the slapstick humor, adults will enjoy the story along with their kids since it doesn’t pander to strictly juvenile audiences, animation buffs will love the detail in the puppets and be baffled by how well they interact, and vegetarians will probably champion this movie as something that promotes their beliefs and is still very family friendly. I enjoyed Chicken Run a lot and highly recommend it to anyone. It’s got a 97% on RottenTomatoes.com; it really is worth your time.

Chicken Run was a good movie without being preachy. Can you think of other movies that were blatant propaganda hidden in an animated kids feature? FernGully: The Last Rainforest comes to mind. Comment below and tell me about some others.

The Pirates! Band of Misfits Movie Review

Stop-motion animation seems to be a dying art. It used to be featured much more frequently; not all of them were targeted towards young audiences. Now we get family friendly films once a blue moon, but even then it seems like the medium is perpetuated primarily by Tim Burton. Nevertheless, we still received a great stop-motion animated film with The Pirates! Band of Misfits (2012).

After years of humiliation and failed attempts to win the coveted Pirate of the Year Award, Pirate Captain (Hugh Grant) and his oddball crew take on the most renowned pirates in the world in a race to pillage the most booty. In their efforts, they cross paths with the lovelorn scientist Charles Darwin (The Doctor David Tennant), who persuades the Captain that the crew’s prized “parrot,” Polly, could be the answer to the untold riches they are searching for. Their adventure takes them to Victorian London where they meet the notorious pirate-hating Queen Victoria (Imelda Staunton). It soon unfolds that Darwin’s motives for helping the crew are not what they seem, and that the Queen has an evil hidden agenda of her own. The Pirate Captain must choose between basking in the glory of being crowned Pirate of the Year, or staying faithful to his trusted crew.

The Pirates! Band of Misfits has an all-star cast. In addition to the names mentioned above, there is also Martin Freeman, Anton Yelchin, Jeremy Pivin, Salma Hayek, Brian Blessed, and Brendan Gleeson. You couldn’t ask for a more diverse array of comical UK actors for this slapstick zany adventure.

The Pirates! was animated by the same stop-motion animation crew that did Chicken Run (2000) and the Wallace and Gromit movie The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005). The animation is phenomenal to say the least. The movement is smooth, seamless, and full of intricate subtleties and detail. Similar to Gromit in the Were-Rabbit film, there is also a character with no actual dialogue. Darwin’s “Man-Panzee” is so expressive that you can still tell what is going through the character’s mind without having the character verbalizing it. That just goes to show how well this movie was animated.

Something I thought was annoying in both Chicken Run and Were-Rabbit was the blatant vegetarian and animal rights themes in them. Vegetarianism and animal rights aren’t bad, but those films got rather preachy and beat you over the head with the concepts. The Pirates did not do that, thank goodness. In fact, the pirate crew regularly had “ham night” for dinner. It was not bashing vegetarianism, I’m just glad I wasn’t having a bunch of animal-rights-thumping pirates trying to convince me to eat tofu. That would have been incredibly stupid.

The Pirates! Band of Misfits is full of zany and joyfully silly gags. There are times it feels like an old Loony Tunes cartoon with some distinctive British wit. People are hit with frying pans, causing the frying pan to take on the shape of the person’s face. The face on a painting becomes goofy and distorted after being hit by a cannonball. Skidding tire sounds are made when the pirate ship makes sharp turns. There’s also more trap door gags than you can shake a stick at. I’d hazard a guess that adults who grew up with Loony Tunes will get a bigger kick out of this movie than kids will.

The story is pretty simple and doesn’t stand out as a stellar piece of writing. It feels pretty childish, but I think that’s what makes it so fun. It’s got a Saturday morning cartoon quality to it, but it has lots of gags that will fly over kids’ head and keep adults laughing. It also has simple enough plot for young viewers to understand and enough slapstick to keep them involved. This movie might appeal most to adult viewers who are fans of Monty Python or The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Just take it as it is; a silly, slapstick comedy that the whole family will enjoy.

The Pirates! Band of Misfits was certainly a fun movie. I enjoyed it and it kept me laughing throughout. This is a perfect movie for a family movie night. Kids will love it and adults will enjoy it, too. The number of animated characters moving about on the screen at one time was impressive enough; that is very complicated and difficult to achieve in stop-motion animation. But the detail beyond that is incredible to watch. I didn’t quite love it enough to want to buy a copy of it, but I imagine most families with young kids will want a copy of their own.

What is your favorite stop-motion animated film? Comment below and tell me why!