A Shaun The Sheep Movie: Farmageddon review: an ingenious, uproarious reminder of what makes Britain great
Dirs: Will Becher, Richard Phelan; Starring: Justin Fletcher, Amalia Vitale, Kate Harbour, John Sparkes, Kate Harbour, Joe Sugg (noises). U cert, 87 mins.
Aardman’s original Shaun the Sheep Movie, released in 2015, was one of those family films whose full brilliance only became apparent with multiple viewings. On a first encounter, it was a charming, gentle pastoral caper: lower-stakes than Chicken Run, and smaller-scale than The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists.
Yet after 11 or 12 DVD revisits – no films have to undergo the same scrutiny as those aimed at under-tens – it started to look like an existentially attuned silent comedy masterpiece worthy of Jacques Tati. Midcentury Paris, meet the modern English market town. Monsieur Hulot, your heir is a stop-motion plasticine ruminant.
News that the second Shaun feature would venture into the realm of science-fiction suggested something more blockbuster-esque might be in store – even though the series’ no-dialogue rule has held fast. Yet while Farmageddon features a little space travel, its storytelling and sense of humour remain resolutely and uproariously down-to-earth.
Steven Spielberg might have used sci-fi as a lens through which to examine the anxieties of American suburbia in ET The Extra-Terrestrial, but even he stopped short of including a slapstick set-piece about sorting rubbish into the correct coloured bins.
Aardman pays generous tribute to Spielberg’s ET and Close Encounters of the Third Kind here – as well as dozens of other beloved films and TV series in the genre, from The X-Files and Doctor Who to a triumphantly silly homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey. But at its heart, Farmageddon is a story about fellowship and fitting in, told with an emotional clarity and eloquence that feels like a new high watermark for the British animation studio. Close-ups overflow with often heartbreaking expressive detail, while the scenery’s proudly handcrafted look – you find yourself second-guessing what everything’s made of – makes every wide shot feel like a feat of ingenuity.
The tale begins with the sighting of a UFO near Mossy Bottom Farm, which has government agents and day-trippers alike scouring the area for alien life. Meanwhile the spacecraft’s passenger – a sparkly pink-and-purple toadstool lookalike called Lu-La – is adopted by Shaun and his flock, who help her evade detection as mischievously as possible.
Shaun and Lu-La’s escapades mostly revolve around the need to make new friends and acclimatise to new surroundings, and will be recognisable to anyone of primary school age, or indeed over it. Why are they are so relentlessly endearing and funny?
Comic timing is a big part of it: every skit and pratfall is staged to split-second perfection. Yet it also feels crucial that they’re unfolding somewhere that is unmistakably the UK in 2019: not an idealised biscuit-tin pastiche of the place, but the real, slightly daft and dog-eared deal.
When Shaun orders a takeaway, for instance, it isn’t traditional fish and chips, but three greasy pizzas delivered by moped from a shop that’s a glowing glass and red plastic eyesore. (Joe Sugg, the YouTube star turned Strictly contestant, provides the moped driver’s grunts and squeaks.) A sequence in which Lu-La goes hyper on sugar takes place in a familiarly bland high street mini-supermarket, and involves a lot of grim-looking own-brand pick and mix.
The music selection, meanwhile, likewise feels like an astutely judged slice of the times: a classic Chemical Brothers festival track for a mad flying saucer ride over the fields; an upbeat duet between Kylie Minogue and the indie rock group The Vaccines; a fantastic bouncy grime remix of the Shaun the Sheep theme tune – with U-rated lyrics.
Even the theme park the farmer hastily erects in an attempt to cash in on the local UFO fever smacks of the bodge-job Winter Wonderlands that spring up around the UK every November, and keep daytime television shows in consumer horror stories until Christmas Eve. At what feels like a time of heightened national sensitivity and twitchiness, there is a peculiar joy in seeing the country reflected with such genuineness and warmth, and with its foibles so fondly lampooned.
In fact, after spending an hour and a half in Aardman’s Britain – bursting at the seams with wit, and shaped by a love that literally leaves thumb-prints – you might find yourself remembering what makes the real thing so great. Step aside, politicians: there’s a clay sheep here who might just have what it takes to knead a nation back together.
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