Gire: Dialogue-free 'Shaun the Sheep' a sheer delight
The way I see it, Aardman's engaging grand slam lamb comedy "Shaun the Sheep Movie" will be the weightiest competitor against Pixar's "Inside Out" for the Oscar for best animated feature film.
Both movie plots involve characters undertaking major quests. Pixar's computer-animated film relies on mind-blowing imagination and nontraditional narrative (no antagonists, for one thing).
Aardman's (mostly) stop-motion animation employs a standard-issue villain, but presents its ultrasmart humor without a syllable of dialogue.
In fact, the only verbal communication in "Shaun the Sheep" comes from newspaper articles, signs and letters. The characters "speak" in nonsensical sounds, making their emotions and thoughts all the more difficult to communicate.
Writers/directors Mark Burton and Richard Starzak would have none of that lazy narrative shortcut called "voice-over narration."
Next, "Shaun the Sheep" accepted an even tougher challenge: Shaun doesn't possess eyebrows, a key component to facial expressions essential to quickly communicate Shaun's feelings.
Yet, "Shaun the Sheep" is a sheer delight and an artistic achievement in animation. Quite an accomplishment for a woolly character from Nick Park's 1995 Oscar-winning short film "A Close Shave."
Shaun becomes bored from the daily repetition at the Mossy Bottom Farm, run by the Farmer and his dutiful dog Bitzer. One day Shaun spots a sign on a bus, "Take the day off!" Shaun (who apparently reads English) executes a daring escape plan accompanied by composer Ilan Eshkeri's sly nod to "The Great Escape."
Instructing his fellow sheep to jump over a fence until the easily suggestible Farmer falls fast asleep, Shaun plans to party like it's 1989. Then a runaway trailer housing the sleeping Farmer winds up miles away in the Big City.
Now a lamb on the lam, Shaun feels so sheepish that he and his dyed-in-the-wool pals join Bitzer in locating their slumbering Farmer, unaware that a head injury has knocked his memory out.
Like the amnesiac Kermit the Frog in "Muppets Take Manhattan," the Farmer wanders around the Big City until he finds employment. Not shearing sheep, but shearing people's heads at a fancy, upscale hair salon.
Can Shaun, his pals and a sorry-looking stray dog named Slip save the Farmer before the villainous animal control officer A. Trumper (inspired by "Paul Blart: Mall Cop") throws them all into the animal hoosegow?
Before creating "Shaun the Sheep," filmmakers (20 animators and 30 model makers) studied Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, the first 20 minutes of "WALL-E," the Oscar-winning silent comedy "The Artist" and episodes of "Mr. Bean."
The research paid off. because the movie's broad physical comedy - traditionally considered lowbrow humor - provides the smartest visual jokes to hit the silver screen since "Airplane."
The filmmakers, of course, call "Shaun the Sheep" a classic example of "no-brow" humor.
“Shaun the Sheep Movie”
★ ★ ★ ★
Directed by: Mark Burton and Richard Starzak
Other: A Studio Canal release. Rated PG for rude humor. 85 minutes