Shaun the Sheep Movie 2015

       Shaun and the other animals live on the Mossy Bottom Farm in northern England.  Shaun is tired of the same work and the same schedule at the farm everyday.  He decides he wants a day off but the farmer must not know.  The farmer fell asleep in a trailer and it rolled down the hills to the big city.  Everything starts to get way out of hand and the farm animals end up going to the big city to try to get the farmer back.  They don’t know that the farmer is in the hospital and he’s lost his memory.  They’ve got to get him back quickly because they can’t feed themselves.  Shaun sneaks onto a double-decker bus and the rest of the sheep follow him.  They encounter an animal containment officer and the sheep need to dress up as people instead of looking like animals.  There is a supply of clothing at a resale shop in the neighborhood.  They also learn they can put people to sleep by leaping over a barrier one at a time.  Life on the farm isn’t half as bad as Shaun thought it was after being in the big city?

     This film uses the clay-manipulation process of stop-motion for the animation and it is a spin-off of the Wallace and Gromit films.  Shaun was also in the 1995 short film A Close Shave and in an episode of the 2002 Wallace and Gromit’s Cracking Contraptions series.  There is also a spin-off, Timmy Time with Shaun’s small cousin for younger children.  The animation is good and a lot of the scenes are very hilarious and ridiculous.  It’s really funny when the sheep dress up as people.  They go into a fancy restaurant for a meal and a very upscale hair salon.   4 1/2* (I really liked this movie)

85 min, Animation directed by Mark Burton, Richard Starzak with the voices of Justin Fletcher, John Sparkes, Omid Djalili, Richard Webber, Kate Harbour, Tim Hands, Andy Nyman, Simon Greenall, Emma Tate.

Note:  Imdb 7.4 out of 10, 99% critic 81% audience on Rotten Tomatoes, Roger Ebert 4*.

Special Note:  There are eight sheep with names, Shaun, Timmy, Hazel (Timmy's mum), Shirley, Nuts and the Twins.  In one scene there are nine sheep and this one looks like a Hazel twin.