It’s a little early for Halloween, but that hasn’t stopped the creators of Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom from delivering their creepiest feature yet. Not to worry that it will scare youngsters, however, since this third film in the hit franchise spun off from Aardman Animation’s Wallace & Gromit series is just as delightful as its predecessors. Delivering the same sort of droll, deadpan British humor via stop-motion animation as 2015’s Shaun the Sheep Movie and 2019’s A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon, this installment could easily become the third to receive an Oscar nomination for best animated film.
The story is set a few days before the holiday, when the farmer and his flock are eagerly preparing for the Halloween Hoedown, with Shaun the Sheep (Justin Fletcher) proudly hanging up his offspring Timmy’s drawing of a pumpkin. The farmer (John Sparkes) has a big crush on the local veterinarian (Nina Sosanya, voicing a new and welcome human character), who keeps finding strange objects in her patients’ bodies. But he’s afraid to ask her to the hoedown because he’s embarrassed about his encroaching hair loss.
Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom
The Bottom Line
As usual, a drolly amusing delight.
Release date: Friday, Sept. 18
Cast: Justin Fletcher, John Sparkes, Kate Harbour, Dani Dyer, Roman Kemp, Nina Sosanya, Paul Whitehouse
Directors: Steve Cox, Matthew Walker
Screenwriters: Mark Burton, Giles Pilbrow
1 hour 20 minutes
When the farmer accidentally destroys his flock’s beloved pumpkin patch, Shaun attempts to remedy things by conducting a few experiments after he reads an introductory science book. While he succeeds in restoring the pumpkins, the well-meaning sheep’s efforts go awry, causing the farmer’s hair-growth lotion to have the unintended effect of making him sprout hair in inappropriate places and eventually covering his entire body with thick, matted orange fur. Needless to say, the farmer’s attempts to rectify the situation with his electric razor are for naught.
As the Beast of Mossy Bottom roams the countryside spurring fear and panic, the intrepid veterinarian attempts to solve the mystery, convinced that the creature she’s tracking is Bigfoot. The farmer’s loyal canine sidekick Bitzer (Sparkes), desperate to find his missing master, gets involved as well. Meanwhile, the farmer’s attempt to remove his excess hair with duct tape proves painful enough to produce monstrous howls.
It’s all sheer silliness, of course, and that’s the point, with the dialogue-free storyline providing the possibilities not only for endless cuteness — these painstakingly moved puppets, representing both human and animal characters, are truly adorable — but also a series of witty visual and sound gags that will please children and adults alike. The former will delight in the big-eyed animal shenanigans, while the latter will enjoy a great gag about the unintelligibility of parking signs and the amusing sight of a particularly large sheep proudly erasing a blackboard with her wool. One of the film’s funniest scenes features the Beast taking refuge in a Halloween shop and trying to blend in with life-size figures of the Mummy and Dracula.
Much as its predecessor riffed on sci-fi movie themes and clichés, this installment finds fodder in horror films with jokes inspired by everything from Frankenstein to the “Thriller” video to Psycho (there’s a shower scene, with the sounds of a sheep flossing replacing Bernard Herrmann’s piercing strings). While not everything works, the gags come at such a fast pace that you’re never bored. And unlike the frenetic, in-your-face style of so many American animated films, the charmingly low-key Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom always feels understated, as if slightly embarrassed when the humor becomes lowbrow.
The fun isn’t just in the images. The performers’ non-verbal voice work, the inventive sound effects and the amusing musical selections add greatly to the fun as well.
