failio-504-682440

There's no doubt about it; this is a great British animation, although it wasn't quite as emotional or depressing as I was expecting. The voice acting, with such voices as John Hurt and Richard Briers, is generally above-par, although in some parts it's a bit samey, and Kehaar's voice has the potential to be very annoying at times (it's also a little weird - in his iconic line "P*SS OFF!" he sounds like the voice of a woman on Monty Python, however in basically all his other dialogue he sounds like someone doing a bad impersonation of Roberto Benigni), however both of these are fairly easy to overlook. The animation is really good for a lesser budgeted film of the time, particularly in the opening sequence of the story of El-ahrairah, but some of the animations are quite choppy in certain places. An annoying side effect of the very high quality of the Digibeta print from which the movie was presented was that some of the imperfections of the animation were made quite obvious (for instance there is quite a lot of static dirt in some scenes, presumably sandwiched inbetween the cels of the characters and background). For such a modest film, it has quite a grand and bombastic orchestral score, which is very well composed and played, making those final scenes even more effective, and it also has an oddly haunting song in Art Garfunkel's ballad "Bright Eyes" playing over what is arguably the most emotional scene in the movie, and making it only more so. For the most part, this is a generally light- hearted little movie, however the last 15 or so minutes are genuinely rather dramatic, quite shocking (seriously, how the f**k did this get a U?), and undeniably tense. It's quite a jarring change of pace, but it's arguably what makes the movie what it is, as well as being a more than satisfying rounding off to the movie. Watership Down for me didn't quite match all of what I had heard it described as; this doesn't matter, though, because it is still a very good animated movie, and was a great, albeit not entirely enjoyable per sé, way to spend a Sunday afternoon at the movies.

For a while, I've held a belief that Aardman can do no wrong, and thankfully this latest example has kept up that belief and then some. It's actually rather difficult to write a review of this movie, because there's not a whole lot one can actually comment on. For instance, I can't say anything about voice acting, or script, because there is literally no dialogue. I mean, there are voice actors (for example Omid Djalili as Tramper the villain) but all they do is mumble (and in the case of the sheep actors, bleat) and stuff. I suppose this, then, serves as a testament to the sheer quality of Aardman's animation. In addition to it being fantastic that claymation can still find its way onto the screen today, it's also brilliant that such a film has found such capable animators; the animation is beautiful, and though you may think they may not be able to convey so much emotion with just facial expressions and mumbles, lo and behold, they do; from glee, to terror, to sadness, to panic, and many more, the characters they've created are absolutely brimming with emotion, and immensely watchable at the same time, and that just makes this movie all the more effective. Lack of a proper script also doesn't seem to trouble Aardman either; this movie is really goddamn funny. The physical comedy sequences, the highlight of which has to be the gleefully chaotic scene in a restaurant, are done to a tee, quite possibly the best Aardman has done them since Flushed Away, while Aardman's trademark sight gags, though not quite as strong as they were in previous offering The Pirates! (the Brian Blessed gag comes to mind), are ever-present and really quite amusing, however obvious or subtle they may be (for instance, "The Big City - twinned with Le Grande Ville, La Ciudad Grande"). My main gripe was that towards the end, which I won't spoil, things do get a bit too cheesy for my tastes, but the rest of the movie, and indeed most of the climactic sequences, more than make up for that. Shaun The Sheep: The Movie only serves to reinforce why I am such a huge fan of the Bristol lads to begin with, and while it is nowhere near as good as their first two features, it is definitely a worthy addition to their fine repertoire of work. If you're looking for some great entertainment on an afternoon, you could do a lot worse than this.