Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom [Aardman Animations Limited]

SHAUN THE SHEEP: THE BEAST OF MOSSY BOTTOM
Directed by Steve Cox and Matthew Walker
Certificate: PG
☆☆☆☆

AARDMAN’S incredible stop-motion animated films are just so aesthetically pleasing. They draw on the same techniques that made Oliver Postgate a seminal creator of children’s entertainment, the same concepts behind Ray Harryheusen, and in this cinematic world of CGI-infused Artificial Intelligentsia, a good dollop of hand-made, hand-moved film feels like a thoroughly needed antidote to modern life.

There is something of Trumpton, Chigley and Camberwick Green about the English pastoral represented in Aardman’s Wallace and Gromit / Shaun the Sheep films. It makes them beautiful for every generation – and the writers have also nailed it when it comes to ridiculous plots, too.

This third installment of the adventures of a sheep called Shuan and his willing flock tells the story of a farmer (John Sparkes provided the grunts in this near silent comedy) who is in love with the local vet (Nina Sosanya).

The sheep have been busy growing pumpkins for Halloween. This flick is aimed at the ever growing Halloween-as-an-event market, a pre-Christmas capitalist sugar rush to sell us stuff we don’t need.

When the clumsy farmer stumbles across their patch and squashes the squashes, Shaun has to save Halloween. Meanwhile the farmer is desperate to invite the vet to a Halloween barn dance, but has lost his mojo because his hair line has receded.

These two plots become intertwined when Shaun mixes up a potent potion – think Roald Dahl’s George’s Marvellous Medicine – to supercharge a new batch of pumpkins in time for the big day. But the hapless farmer accidentally splashes the growth formula all over himself, thinking it is a hair restorer – and turns into an abominable big foot.

This is a silent, physical comedy littered with jokes for all ages… there’s a bit of Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit about the plot, while other films are intentionally referenced – one scene draws on Hitchcock’s Psycho and involves a sheep flossing its teeth. Cue a race to return the farmer to normal before the angry villagers lynch him like a Frankenstein Monster, unite the two hearts aching for each other and get the pumpkins carved in time for the big hoedown.

A good-natured, fast-paced and hilarious romp, Aardman have done it again.