The Farmer and his “workers”
“SHAUN THE SHEEP MOVIE” My rating: A-
85 minutes | MPAA rating: PG
Sorry, “Inside Out.” Move over, “Minions.”
Because the best animated feature of the year — perhaps the best in several years — has arrived in a flurry of flying wool and good-natured weirdness.
“Shaun the Sheep Movie” may not plumb intellectual or emotional depths, but it does something no animated feature has accomplished in ages.
It is non-stop hilarious. Not a minute of this movie goes by without a big, gut convulsing laugh.
Like the series of shorts that inspired it, the film is dialogue-free. It’s a sublime 85-minute pantomime, and the closest thing to silent film genius since the heyday of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin.
The Aardman Animation production (they’re the folks who gave us Wallace & Gromit) is a dazzling display of both animation brilliance (seamlessly melding traditional stop-action Claymation with computer-generated images) and comic inventiveness.
Shaun is one of several ovine residents of a bucolic spread operated by The Farmer. The faithful sheepdog Bitzer maintains a sometimes tense foreman/worker relationship with the herd.
But when The Farmer is swept up in a misadventure to the big city — having lost his memory in a freak accident — Shaun and Bitzer must join forces to rescue their beloved master (who, in his confused state, has gotten a job at a hair salon cutting wealthy heads in the same style he developed shearing sheep).
A herd of farm animals sneaking about the metropolis sends up red flags for an animal control officer, who becomes the film’s villain.
Butler's Cinema Scene 