Despite some forays into computer-generated animation (Flushed Away, Arthur Christmas), Aardman Animations remains committed to the art of stop-motion, as evidenced by their most recent theatrical release, 2015’s Shaun the Sheep Movie, which sees the company struggling but ultimately succeeding at expanding their television series a feature film. The movie lurches to a shaky start, as if uncertain how to stretch its concept to full length, but after a wobbly first act, the narrative hits its stride and runs smoothly to a successful finish, delivering delightful entertainment on the way.
Personally, I was dubious about the potential of a Shaun the Sheep movie. I preferred the title character when he played a supporting role in his debut, A Close Shave, the Oscar-winning short subject starring the lovable characters Wallace and Gromit. The Shaun the Sheep television series moved the character to center stage, but there was not necessarily that much distinctive about the little fur-ball. Sometimes he was the one coming up with clever schemes, but other times he just happened to be the one swept up by the zany antics (i.e., in the first episode, he is dragged around by a hungry, high-speed goat, trailing behind like a water-skier). The show shifted the setting from town to country, placing Shaun on a farm run by another human-dog combo, the Farmer and his Sheep Dog (amusing but no match for Wallace and Gromit). A typical 20-minute episode consists of three unrelated segments, each telling a mini-story. The series cleverly eschewed dialogue, relying only on grunts, bleats, and exclamations (even from the Farmer), but the stories tended to be more juvenile in their appeal than Aardman’s best work. I will admit to being thoroughly charmed by “Who’s the Mummy” (which despite its title is not a horror movie spoof), which had Shaun bedeviled by a quartet of freshly hatched chicks who imprint on him (they resemble tribbles with tiny beaks, and they were so ridiculously cute that I had to laugh in spite of myself). Nevertheless, the question remained: could the format of 6-to-7-minute segments be stretched to full narrative length?
Shaun the Sheep Movie begins with a recreation of the show’s opening title sequence, portraying Shaun, the other sheep, the Farmer, and his dog getting up in the morning; the joke is that this sequence, which repeats weekly on the series, is repeated multiple times in the film, creating an immediate sense of an endless, boring routine, which ultimately motivates Shaun to break that routine by fooling the farmer into sleeping in late, so that the sheep can have a day off. It’s just enough of a narrative tidbit to set up a situation in which the sheep can get into some hi-jinx; basically, it’s little more than what one would see in an average episode, and it initially seems as if the script is simply going to string together several such episodes until they fill the minimum necessary running time. Things start to feel a little desperate when a camper-trailer (in which the farmer is sleeping) rolls down the hill and into nearby city, creating an excuse for one of those action-packed high-speed chases that Aardman does so well (e.g., The Wrong Trousers with Wallace and Gromit); one almost gets the feeling that Aardman is stumbling into DreamWorks Animation territory (in which an extended, gratuitous action set piece is de rigueur in the first twenty minutes of any film).
Fortunately, all of this is just preamble – a messy first act setting up the fun to follow. Once the Farmer awakens in the city, the story moves smoothly from one development to the next, and the script never again seems to be padding itself unnecessarily. The Farmer suffers amnesia, but he recollects enough of his skill with a pair of sheers (originally used on the sheep) to become a successful barber; Shaun and the other sheep, meanwhile, find that the farm doesn’t run so well without the farmer, so they embark on a mission to rescue him, which is complicated by an officer from animal control, who is every bit as threatening and efficient (but a lot less unpleasantly designed) than the one in Madagascar 3).
For its second two-thirds, Shaun the Sheep movie is pretty much a non-stop delight, in which the comic set pieces (such as the sheep disguising themselves as humans to thwart the animal control agent) are effortlessly blended into the narrative. As always, Aardman provides state-of-the-art stop-motion, effortlessly realizing sequences traditionally difficult to achieve in the medium (e.g., splashing water, quickly moving objects). Not all of these tour-de-force moments are high-octane highlights; some are just amusing throw-aways, such as the delightful sequences in which the sheep lull the Farmer into falling asleep by jumping one by one over a fence. The basic joke (counting sheep puts people to sleep, right?) is only mildly funny, but the visual execution augments the humor by having the sheep ever so subtly go into slow motion as they reach the peak of their jump, the floating effect enhancing the hypnotic quality upon their intended victim.
Unlike many of their computer-generated competitors, who sometimes don’t know when to modulate the animated anarchy, the Aardman team know when a simple sight gag is as entertaining as a technical tour-de-force: during a stint in jail, the sheep inmates are continually perturbed by the silent stare of an angry dog in the cell opposite; the joke is that his expression is exactly the same every time the camera cuts to him (which means of course that the animators could save time by not animating the figure). The recurring images eventually pays off with a punchline I won’t spoil, except to say that it explains the character’s total lack of movement.
In a world filled with CGI blockbusters that seem to tell the same tale over and over (little guy achieves his great destiny and/or a sense of belonging), Shaun the Sheep Movie offers a pleasant change of pace. The tactile quality of stop-motion puppetry grounds the visuals – not in reality, exactly , but in a sense of physicality that enhances the sight gags and set pieces; the narrative delivers unpretentious fun without trite lessons about letting go or finding inner self.
I don’t think I will ever love Shaun the Sheep as much as I love Wallace and Gromit, but to my surprise the little lamb’s feature-film debut is actually better than the disappointing Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Shaun the Sheep Movie improves on the television series, providing the kind of stop-motion delights that should amuse adults whether or not they have children.
Tag: Aardman Animations
'Beware the Batman' & DC Nation
Sam Register, executive vice president for creative affairs at Warner Brothers Animation, revealed at MIP Junior (Kids Entertainemt Conference) that the next Batman animated series will be titled BEWARE THE BATMAN.
According World’s Finest, the CGI animated series, set for 2013 will feature:
“… A classic-looking Batman teaming up with a gun-toting Alfred Pennyworth and a female ninja sidekick.
BEWARE THE BATMAN is executive-produced by Glen Murakami, and will explore the mythology’s more obscure villains, such as Professor Pyg, but also won’t shy away from featuring some of the more well-known Batman foes.
In the series, Batman will team up with a younger female sidekick named Katana. During the keynote, Register added that Katana will fill the sidekick role, but won’t be a replacement for Robin.”
Register also provided more details about the Cartoon Network DC NATION programming.
Aardman Animation (THE WRONG TROUSERS) will create new “claymation” Batman amf Plastic Man animated shorts.
Wonder Girl, Batgirl, and Supergirl will team up in the girl appeal SUPER BEST FRIENDS FOREVER.
THE DOOM PATROL will apear in animated shorts.
Previously announced for 2012:
Another season of YOUNG JUSTICE and… 
GREEN LANTERN: THE ANIMATED SERIES
Based upon the DC Comics super hero, the series is an all-new CG animated action series from Warner Bros.
As Earth’s Green Lantern, Hal Jordan is used to being in dangerous situations—but he’s never faced anything like this! Set at the farthest reaches of deep space, Hal must face down an invasion from the Red Lantern Corps. Hal is soon joined by an all-new group of heroes on a mission to protect Guardian Space —and the Green Lantern Corps itself!
I had never heard of “Professor Pyg” before — turns out he’s more an adversary of the recent Dick Grayson/Batman Damien Wayne/Robin, rather than being one of the classic set of villains.
Wallace and Gromit in A Matter of Loaf and Death: review
Wallace and Gromit are back in an all-new animated adventure. After the entertaining but disappointing WALLACE AND GROMIT: THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT (which seemed stretched a bit thin at feature length), creator, director, and co-writer Nick Park returns his delightful plasticine pals to their preferred format, the half-hour short. Even if the results do not quite live up to their best work (THE WRONG TROUSERS, A CLOSE SHAVE), A MATTER OF LOAF AND DEATH is nevertheless another fine mess, loaded with droll dialogue and amusing sight gags.
In the tradition established by THE WRONG TROUSERS, the plot of A MATTER OF LOAF AND DEATH is structured as a Hitchcockian thriller and executed with all the precision and craftsmanship of the genuine article; the humor derives from the amusing absurdity of seeing this story told through the medium of stop-motion.
That recipe may sound as appetizing as bread leavened with gunpowder instead of baking soda, but the dough rises to the correct level, creating a surprisingly good flavor combination, and nowhere is that combination more startlingly effective than in the opening scene: the stop-motion camera creeps up on the draftly naive Baker Bob (a play on co-writer Bob Baker’s name), who doesn’t realize until too late that a rolling pin is aimed at his skull. The shock of the (unseen) impact is almost enough to match that of a serious, live-action film – until Baker Bob falls face-first into his own dough, his glasses landing goofily on the back of his head.
That’s right, ladies and gentlemen: this charming family film begins with a brutal murder – and it’s funny! Not only that: A MATTER OF LOAF AND DEATH sustains the queasy combo of comedy and crime throughout. How? Well, it certainly helps to have the delightful duo of Wallace and Gromit stuck right in the middle of it.
In A MATTER OF LOAF AND DEATH, Wallace and Gromit run a bakery deliver service. On their route one day, they rescue Piella, a former poster girl for bakery advertisements, whose bicycle brakes seem to have gone out. When Gromit checks them out immediately afterward, the brakes seem functional, leading us wonder whether this was truly an accidental encounter. It turns out that Bob was the twelfth baker recently murdered, and the killer is intent on making it a baker’s dozen. Is Wallace really the apple in Piella’s eye, or could shea and her poodle Fluffles be involved in the crime?
If there is a weakness with the story of A MATTER OF LOAF AND DEATH, it is that it tends to revisit elements from previous Wallace and Gromit films without expanding and improving on the ideas in a way that tops its predecessors (a neat trick that both THE WRONG TROUSERS and A CLOSE SHAVE pulled off). Essentially, this film recreates the story of A CLOSE SHAVE: Wallace meets and falls in love with a woman with a pet dog, who turn out to be involved in criminal activity; at least the dynamic is changed in terms of who is the perpetrator and who is the reluctant accomplice.
Nevertheless, A MATTER OF LOAF AND DEATH delivers a crackling mystery story in 30-minutes, filled with funny sequences that show off the beloved characters as they perform variations on their familiar themes (once again, thanks to Wallace’s amateur inventions, simply getting up in the morning is akin to being a marble hurtling through a Rube Goldberg device). The Hitchcockian homages are clearer than ever, including a dead-on recreation of Arbogast’s walk up the stairs of the Bates house in PSYCHO (1960), as Gromit investigates nefarious activity.
Mixed in are numerous other references: a roomful of mannequins (one for each murder victim) has an eerie ambiance worth of Mario Bava’s giallo films (e.g. BLOOD AND BLACK LACE); Gromit’s difficulty disposing of a bomb hilariously duplicates a similar predicament in BATMAN (1966), and James Cameron gets another shout-out (it was a Terminator-type dog in A CLOSE SHAVE; this time it’s a fight on a forklift that echoes Ripley’s power-loader battle with the queen in ALIENS).
The master craftsmanship displayed in scenes like this is all the more impressive when one considers the challenges of stop-motion, not only on a technical level but an artistic one: how do you “sell” this kind of material to an audience watching what looks like a colorful kiddie film? One of the great achievements of director Nick Park is that, although his stop-motion work display a charming old-fashioned hands-on approach, it also pushes the limits in terms of advancing the technique in modern ways.
The motion blur necessary to create a convincing sense of buildings flying by as a car races down the street is rendered so convincingly that you almost overlook what an achievement it is. And in another clever moment, Wallace is actually made to look as though he is leaping through the air in slow-motion. In effect, Park is proving that stop-motion animation, though apparently primitive in the era of modern computer-animation, can still provide the shots necessary to provide an exciting, visceral thrill.
Peter Sallis once again provides the voice of Wallace, the exaggerated accent providing the perfect opportunity for expressive lip-sync animation. (If you want to experience something unusual, pop TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA or any of Sallis’ work for Hammer Films: hearing that voice come out of an actual actor – in a horror film – is positively surreal.) And once again, the silent Gromit steals the show with his expressive eye-rolls and pantomime gestures.
My initial reaction to A MATTER OF LOAF AND DEATH is one of slight disappointment. The bits and pieces form a colorful mosaic, but the finished work is not quite a successful whole. Although the set-pieces are fun as always, the finale does not built to the sort of deliriously breathless climax we have come to expect; and it leaves our heroes too much on the sidelines as the guest stars take over. Still, to say that A MATTER OF LOAF AND DEATH is not quite another CLOSE SHAVE is hardly a criticism, and in fact my initial reaction to A CLOSE SHAVE was that it was not another WRONG TROUSERS. With such high expectations, disappointment is almost inevitable. Hopefully, that will pass (as it did with A CLOSE SHAVE), making it easier to judge A MATTER OF LOAF AND DEATH on its own worthy terms.
Awards and Nominations
As with the previous Wallace and Gromit films, A MATTER OF LOAF AND DEATH was nominated in 2010 for an Oscar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science; however, it did not win. For those keeping score at home, A GRAND DAY OUT was nominated for Best Animated Short; THE WRONG TROUSERS and A CLOSE SHAVE won for Best Animated Short; CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT won for Best Animated Feature; and A MATTER OF LOAF AND DEATH was nominated for Best Animated Short.
Other awards and nominations include:
- 2009 Annie Awards: won for best Animated Short Subject
- 2009 BAFTA Awards: won Best Short Animation
- 2009 Chicago International Children’s Film Festival: 2nd place for Animated Short Film or Video
Other references and inside jokes
- The scene of Piella and Wallace “molding” the dough recalls a similar moment (with clay) in GHOST.
- Vinyl record called “Puppy Love” by “Doggy Osmond” – which is heard at end of film. Other albums include “The Hound of Music” and one by a group called “The Beagles.”
- Grommit reads “Electronic surveillance for Dogs”. In THE WRONG TROUSERS, he read “Electronics for Dogs”.
- Fluffles sleeps in a box marked “Meatabix” – the same brand name of dog food as seen on the box from which Gromit spies on Feathers McGraw in THE WRONG TROUSERS.
- Gromit owns DVDs for “Bite Club”, “The Bone Identity”, “Pup Fiction”, “Where Beagles Dare,” and the “The Dogfather”
A MATTER OF LOAF AND DEATH (2008). Directed by Nick Park. Written by Nick Park & Bob Baker. Voices: Peter Sallis, Sally Lindsay, Melissa Collier, Sarah Laborde.
Creature Comforts: The Complete First & Second Seasons – DVD Review
This DVD collects the first two season’s worth of episodes from Aardman Animations’s British stop-motion television series, along with the 1990 Oscar-winning theatrical short subject on which the show is based. Each episode recreates the formula of the original film, mimicking a documentary format, with actual recorded interviews serving as dialogue spoken by a series of colorful animated creatures. The results can be a bit repetitious when viewed one after the other, but the series manages to keep uncovering new ground by focusing each episode on a different theme. Throughout the course of two seasons, some characters even emerge as mini-stars, offering up droll dialogue and observations on a wide range of topics.
DVD DETAILS
The TV episodes and the theatrical short subject, the DVD set contains a number of extras that provide a glimpse of the work that goes into making the series.
- Bringing Creature Comforts to Life: Live Action Video (LAV) – director acts out action for animators.
- Creating Creature Comforts – Behind the Scenes
- Favorite Bits
The making-of featurettes are loaded with interviews from the behind-the-scenes personnel, including the animators, the directors, and Nick Park (who directed the original short subject). The highlight is a look at the interviewing process, which reveals the actual human faces of the interview subjects whose taped responses provide the voices for the animated creatures; it becomes clear that Aardman Animations has a few favorite “stars” who they know will provide the kind of dry humor that inspires the animators.
Creature Comforts – DVD Review
CREATURE COMFORTS is the first Oscar-winning film from the unbeatable team of Aardman Animations and director Nick Park. Presented as a documentary, the 1990 stop-motion production features a series of interviews with zoo animals, who express an amusing variety of views regarding their stay in captivity – sometimes hilarious, sometimes poignant.
Much of the humor derives from the casting of the animal characters to match the pre-recorded voices. CREATURE COMFORTS, which took home an Academy Award in the Animated Short Subject category, features claymation creatures (technically, plasticine) whose lip movements are synchronized with unscripted dialogue recorded live via interviews with people asked about living conditions in England. Putting these words in the mouths of animated animals, suggests some interesting parallels between the human condition and living life in a cage: A gorilla complains about the cold, wet climate. A koala bear feels very looked after by his keepers. The highlight is a puma, obviously feeling confined in his pen, who keeps repeating the word “space” as he years for wide-open terrain.
The animation, with its exaggerated lip movements to match the human enunciation, delivers perfect performances that bring the characters to life as they struggle to make their point for the camera. The psuedo-documentary format results in a talking-heads style of filmmaking, but Park adds a few visual flourishes, in the form of sight gags taking place in the background. The result is a delightful short subject with as much entertainment and artistic value as many feature-length films.
DVD DETAILS
Now out of print, Image Entertainment’s 2000 DVD combines CREATURE COMFORTS with three other titles from Aardman Animations: WAT’S PIG, NOT WITHOUT MY HANDBAG, and ADAM. CREATURE COMFORTS is presented in a 1.85 transfer enhanced for widescreen TVs; the other films are presented in full-frame 1.33 transfers. There are no bonus features. CREATURE COMFORTS is the highlight of the four, but the other films are all remarkable and entertaining in their own right.
WAT’S PIG, written and directed by Peter Lord, is an amusing prince-and-the-pauper type tale of identical twins separated at birth. The story, which is presented as a sort of mini-epic, is told without more than a word or two of dialogue, with a split screen detailing the lives of the two boys as they grow up and eventually meet when the peasants rise up and storm the local castle. The ambitious film was nominated in the Animated Short category in 1996.
NOT WITHOUT MY HANDBAG – written and directed by Boris Kossmehl, with an assist on the script from Andrea Friedrich – is a mondo-weird, almost psychedelic story about what happens when a woman misses a payment on a home appliance: according to the fine print, she forfeits her soul, which is dragged to hell. However, the woman just can’t rest quietly without her handbag back on Earth, so she returns to the land of the living to reclaim it. Fortunately, her neice is not too alarmed by the unexpected reappearance (“My aunt is a zombie from Hell,” she observes casually”). Despite the Aardman pedigree, and the bright colors, NOT WITHOUT MY HANDBAG feels a bit like something from Tim Burton and/or Henry Selick. If you dig NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS or CORALINE, you should get a kick out of this.
ADAM is another Oscar nominated Animated Short from Peter Lord. Presented with a tongue-in-cheek simulation of awe, the film depicts what happens when the hand of God (or more accurately, the stop-motion animator) fashions a lump of clay into the first man, and then creates a companion for him (though not quite the companion that was expected).
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)
After winning two Academy Awards in the short animated category, Wallace and Gromit’s feature film debut in THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT is, frankly, disappointing. It’s not as good as THE WRONG TROUSERS; it’s not as good as A CLOSE SHAVE. But at least it is good.
One suspects that DreamWorks (which has had blockbuster success with computer-generated animated films like SHREK and MADAGASCAR) held a heavier hand over this production than they did on CHICKEN RUN (the previous feature film collaboration between the American distributor and the British production company, Aardman Animations). The humor here seems slightly cruder and more blunt (lots of burbing, and vegetables strategically placed to align with human anatomy in suggestive ways), without as much of the quirky British sensibility that made the Wallace & Gromit short subjects so endearing.
Which is not to say it isn’t there; it simply appears in a lower ratio. Basically, the film feels a bit like a sequel wherein all the stuff that worked previously is stitched back together and hyped up even bigger than before. In this case, this means there are several fast-paced action scenes that play out quite well, but the plot and characterization suffer slightly in the effort to make the stop-motion subject matter exciting enough for the big screen.
This time out, the story puts stop-motion stars Wallace and Gromit in charge of their own pest control business (called “Anti Pesto”), a humane operation that captures rather than kills the ravenous rabbits that threaten the local village’s annual produce contest. (Curiously, Wallace and Gromit seemed to live in the city in their short subjects; no explanation is given for how their house wound up in the English countryside.) In an attempt to rehabilitate the rabbits, Wallace the inventor comes up with a cracking contraption that transfers his brainwaves into the creatures: since Wallace loves cheese and hates vegetables, this should put a stop to their ravenous rampages on the would-be prize-winning melons, etc.
Of course, the contraption goes awry, creating the titular monster. The film finally gets going during a nighttime chase with Gromit the dog behind the wheel of the Anti-Pesto van, trying to track the beast, which is glimpsed only in shadows. The rest of the story throws in an obnoxious villain (voiced by Fiennes) and his dog (no match for Preston in A CLOSE SHAVE), a love story (likewise, no match for the one in A CLOSE SHAVE), a bunch of cute rabbits (not as cute as the sheep in A CLOSE SHAVE), and a sort of flying sequence (again, not as good as the one in A CLOSE SHAVE, but at least it’s different enough to stand on its own). There is also a fairly predictable (it’s given away in the trailer) but well-handled twist regarding the identity of the were-rabbit, and the story comes to a reasonably splendid climax when the big-sized bunny makes like King Kong and climbs a mansion with the screaming leading lady tucked under his arm — a nice homage to the 1933 classic that set the standard for stop-motion monster effects.
Both THE WRONG TROUSERS and A CLOSE SHAVE work so well because they are Hitchcock-style pastiches played straight (well, about as straight as a stop-motion film about a daffy inventor and his anthropomorphic dog can be). Those films are not only short; they are also tightly structured, with editing and camera angles as carefully laid out as in any serious live-action film, and the humor comes not so much from the verbal jokes and visual sight gags as from the absurdity of applying a deadpan tone to the ridiculous situation. For example, there is nothing overtly funny about Feathers McGraw, the jewel thief in WRONG TROUSERS; the joke is watching this little black penguin go about his work as a master criminal (simply seeing sweat drip from his brow during a tense robbery sequence was enough to generate laughter).
CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT, on the other hand, consciously spoofs old horror movies, but this source of inspiration never yields as much inspiration as the thriller-plots of the short subjects. Part of the problem is that the threats in the feature film are not very threatening: the human hunter is just a buffoon — a straw man set up to be knocked down — and the were-rabbit (when finally seen clearly) is kind of cute and cuddly. Like the rest of the new characters, they look a bit too goofy (it’s as if the cast of all the other short films and commercials produced by Aardman Animation had wandered onto the set of Wallace and Gromit by mistake). As a result, there is not much tension, even on a make-believe level; the film is, therefore, forced to rely instead on the jokes to hold viewer attention on a laugh-by-laugh basis.
Fortunately, the worst of the weakness is apparent early in the story, which feels padded and frantic at the same time — trying hard to grab audience attetenion with some manic antics while not really going anywhere fast. Once the were-rabbit plot fully emerges after the too-long set-up, the film hits its stride and runs reasonably smoothly from there, with several clever sight gags and some impressively staged stop-motion sequences that play to the strengths of director Nick Park and his famous creations.
Overall, the film is definitely worth seeing, especially if you’re a fan, and children will probably love it. But if you are hoping to convert some of your friends into fans of Wallace & Gromit, you would be well advised to show the the wonderful “Early Adventures” before sending them off to watch this feature-film debut. To be fair, one should add that the film’s closing credits are quite charming, thanks to dozens of bunnies who float up and into the frame in ones and twos — waving, twirling, dancing and rubbing noses.
In theatres, CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT was preceded by a CGI short subject “The Madagasgar Penguins in A Christmas Caper.” It seems like a great idea, because the penguins were easily the best thing in MADAGASCAR, and the short subject is actually an improvement on the feature film. Still, it is not quite as hysterical as it intends to be. The character voices and sight gags are quite amusing, but the character design and computer-generated animation are not particularly outstanding. Still, whatever the shortcomings of the CGI, the penguin characters are a great comedy team, and it’s good to see them shine in their own little movie.
WALLACE AND GROMIT: CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT (2005). Directed by Nick Park & Steve Box. Written by Park & Box & Mark Burton & Bob Baker. Voices: Peter Sallis, Helena Bonham Carter, Ralph Fiennes, Peter Kay, Nicholas Smith, Liz Smith.
Copyright 2005 Steve Biodrowski