Directed By Steve Cox and Matthew Walker

Starring – John Sparkes, Nina Sosanya, Justin Fletcher

The Plot – The new adventure sees the residents of Mossy Bottom Farm looking forward to Halloween, until the clumsy Farmer trashes the Flock’s beloved pumpkin patch. When Shaun (Fletcher) turns mad scientist to fix the problem, things rapidly spiral out of control, leading to a wild beast roaming the woods.

Rated PG for mild scary action

SHAUN THE SHEEP: THE BEAST OF MOSSY BOTTOM | Official Trailer | STUDIOCANAL

POSITIVES

Parental horror hounds tasked with finding a harmlessly accessible gateway into the murky depths of their favorite genre could do a whole lot worse than The Beast of Mossy Bottom, especially with its richly appreciative documentation of its history and atmospheric elements that make this easily the most artistically ambitious of the Shaun the Sheep trilogy. Like any Aardman Animations Production, the film is blessed with immaculately rendered and luminously lit handcrafted animation that is not only brought to life so seamlessly with smoothly free-flowing execution in the movements of its lens and framed characters, but also enveloped by a thickly ominous element of dread that works surprisingly effective in the Mossy Bottom established setting, doing more than enough to pave the way for a rich familiarity of iconography, shadow play, and overhanging fog that help define so many of these movies. Like the previous Shaun films before it, the animation is full of elaborately detailed expressionism that helps connect us firmly to the emotionally timed responses of the characters, even without the use of beneficial dialogue at its disposal, and with that aforementioned detail seamlessly replicated throughout the decoration of various town shops and even recreated moments in everything from Universal Monsters to psychological slashers, Cox and Walker prove their endless adoration of the impressionable imprint that the genre has left of their careers, incorporating them naturally and justifiably in the depths of a story with no shortage of its own bizarreness. As expected, the consistency in comedy is certainly reminiscent of Aardman’s past efforts, without anything feeling remotely limited by a PG rating, this time while riding a rich combination of chaotic slapstick and cerebral sight gags that prove its cunning cleverness without the childishly tasteless evoking of toilet humor or obnoxious personalities, and while this definitely is a comedy first, above all else, the magnitude of the material doesn’t compromise the integrity of its gloomy ominousness, instead balanced appropriately to craft an anything goes kind of circumstance that compliments the more strangely surreal and imaginative that it gets with its material. On top of this, considering the plot is brought to life through one crucial misunderstanding by mob mentality, it becomes an indulgingly hilarious treat to see how the film maintains this miscommunication throughout a 75-minute engagement, featuring an airtight balance of mutual perspectives between the farmer’s dreaded disposition and the farm animals attempting to restore his humanity. While the impression of the performances are obviously limited by the lack of dialogue throughout the engagement, much credit is ultimately earned from this highly talented ensemble for the emphasized noises that they deliver to such boldly expressive animation, particularly John Sparkes and Justin Fletcher, who each provide double duty in the range of their limitless talents. As the farmer and Bitzer, Sparkes provides the necessary grunting, mumbles, and shouts that comprise the former’s wide range of emotional responses while in the midst of so much mayhem, while his howling and hollering in executing latter maximize the potential of comedic resonation as the eyes and ears of this evolving conflict, and with Sparkes enacting these characters for the better part of twenty years, with a contrasting deviance to the tones of each, he loses himself accordingly in the familiar depths of the characters, making it easy to forget that this is one vocal actor commanding so much screen time. While Fletcher’s turn is deduced significantly to more of a supporting role, this time around, he continuously rises to the occasion with the kind of speculative eagerness that irresponsibly endears Shaun to his scientific experiments, and only once the sheep realizes the error of his ways does Fletcher’s turn evoke more of the urgent franticness that we would expect in someone carrying the burden of town hysteria, cementing an equally gripping control over the integrity of Shaun and Timmy, in ways that are every bit as effortlessly impressive as Sparkes. Aside from meticulous animation, tonal balance, and prominent performances, The Beast of Mossy Bottom is also elevated by tremendous production values that correspond so naturally to the integrity of the animation, specifically the snappy editing practices and the instrumentally versatile score from Natalie Holt, who is making her debut to animated feature films. On the subject of Holt’s massive importance to the experience, her orchestral arrangements certainly carries the herculean task of supplanting emotional resonation to the integrity of muted characters in a silent film, where Holt seamlessly underscores every influential nuance of a character’s emotions towards feeling influential to the interpretation of these interactions, but beyond that flourishes whimsically adventurous in ways that are identifiably reminiscent of Carl Stalling’s cheeky compositional tones from the Looney Tunes franchise. Considering Holt’s themes are every bit as presently persistent as the movie’s characters themselves, she’s asked to compose this massive catalogue of instrumental impulses to the integrity of each individualized scene, with her most prolific moments conjured from those organ-driven themes during scientific experiments, that brought back the exaggerated tragedy and triumph of Bride of Frankenstein, and with Holt’s themes married so conductively with the imagery, it crafts a gothic grandeur to the outlining of the engagement that produces quite the appropriate personality for the opportunity, cementing an accomplishment for Holt that I hope will carry her to future Shaun the Sheep additional installments. Not to be outdone influentially by Holt’s themes, the anxious editing from Dan Hembery is just as significant to the overall approach of the film, where much of the timing and consistency of his spontaneous cuts corresponds conductively to the escalated chaos of the material, providing a more than formidable path to permeated laughter in the extent of aftershock deliveries that directly counterpunch the telegraphed path of a scene’s direction. Lastly, while the material endears itself to manifested themes pertaining to miscommunication and irrational judgments upon appearances, the earnestness of its morality towards impressionable youths truly stems from the utilized experiences of its characters, where their actions execute some admirable environmental practices that prove the film to educate as much as it entertains. What’s vital about these opportunistic instances is that the moments themselves are ingrained so naturally and fluidly in the execution of the scenes that they’re lifted from, instead of halting a scene’s momentum directly in its tracks, and while this won’t typically factor in to the vitals of the experience for most audiences, I find it quite refreshing when an animated studio allows its characters to walk the walk in what the screenwriters are preaching, proving on more than a few measurable instances that this film’s heart is always in the right place, regardless if we realize it or not.

NEGATIVES

Though nothing even closely compromising to the collective extent of the movie’s execution, there were two counterproductively detracting aspects that I couldn’t shake during the extent of my engagement, resulting in some lingering regrets that were both so unnecessary to such a meticulously measured production. For starters, the consistency of the movie’s breakneck pacing through a 75-minute engagement certainly helps maintain the urgency of the narrative conflict, but beyond that undercuts the magnitude of emotional impulses that aren’t left to linger significantly long enough during the third act, leaving much of the emotional stakes left to fend for itself while undercutting the meaningful value of the character dynamics. If the film received another 5-10 minutes towards its runtime, then I feel like it would’ve been given the necessary allowance to linger a bit longer in those complex feelings, especially once the animals realize the identity of The Beast, enacting for more of a roller-coaster of emotions rather than the one-dimensional emotionality that comprises the near entirety of the experience. Beyond this, my only other problem with the film was the production’s unnecessary opting for a lyrical soundtrack that deliberately felt like it undervalues the magnitude of what Natalie Holt was conjuring instrumentally, especially considering the trio of tracks themselves are every bit musically monotonous as they are lyrically generic. One such track is even repeated twice, with meaningfully composited lyrics that assess “Here comes the monster, here comes the monster”, and while I’m not completely against the need for a shamelessly shilling soundtrack, especially if it elevates the appeal of the imagery, it feels like the pandering here is unknowingly corny in what it conjures, leaving me wishing that the film remained true to its overall commitment towards a lack of dialogue, even right down to an inorganic soundtrack that ailed relentlessly on my sensitive ears.

OVERALL
Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom is an infectiously silly and charmingly rousing animated adventure that evokes enough time-honored horror sensibilities to the distinguishment of its mesmerizing presentation to accommodate equally to veterans and newbies of the genre alike, mere weeks before Halloween hysteria takes shape. With impressively hand-crafted Claymation animation, dialogue-free expressive performances, and meaningfully consistent comedy, the film is an effortless breeze of an engagement that finds more than one exploratory avenue to the hearts of its audience, providing enough campy thrills, chills, and spills to be a treat without trick

My Grade: 8.2 or B+