Roughly five or six months from now, award chatter for Oscars and Baftas and Academy things will start. There will be speculation and hype driving movies toward nominations or awards, or certain actors being shuffled up to a pantheon. Real movies like any biopic you could care to mention will be released just in time to be nominated or to be canned as award-bait or whatever they call it, and really it's a load of balls isn't it?
A (possibly flawed) glance over the awards indicates that the majority of the heavy hitters were released around that December window - the Stephen Hawking biopic, Imitation Game, Birdman, Boyhood (no, I didn't get it) and many more. Even Whiplash, released to Sundance film festival on the 16 January 2014, wasn't released until October of the same year, which was close enough to award season for people to talk of Oscars for JK Simmonds (who played the mad scientist type Jazz teacher) along with everyone else
My complaint I suppose isn't that these films aren't good (Whiplash in particular is fabulous) but simply the idea that films released around Autumn/Winter time stand a better chance of getting awards where really good films from the rest of the year stand a diminished chance. Which is a massive shame because films like Ex Machina may well be completely unremembered. And this pleb thinks that Shaun The Sheep Movie will suffer the same exclusion, which is a massive shame, because in said plebs opinion this film is worthy of an award because it is just really, really, really good.
Whats it about? Well, for starters it is about Shaun, who happens to be a sheep; a more food deprived sheep but a sheep all the same. He and his herd live on a farm, but get tired of the constant, repetitive chores they go through on the farm under the guard of their incomprehensible farmer, simply known as the Farmer. Presumably they don't know what happens to most other sheep, but anyway they devise a plan to get a day off, only for it to backfire; Farmer ends up in the big city and Shaun and co have to set off to rescue him.
Very usual, very typical animal in city idea except for a few notable things: there isn't a word of dialogue, barring the nonsensical (possibly welsh) rambling of the farmer. The second thing is, and this is important: it is funnier then any other film I have seen this year combined. There hasn't been much competition granted; Get Hard was average and Top Five I'll get to another day. But neither were really close to being as funny as Shaun The Sheep was. The visual gags are endless; you can feel the love poured into every scene, into the silly little moments with bird watchers and traffic lights and doctors and the gang themselves. Every scene has some little joke to catch, some five second sketch crafted to stop-motion perfection from first moment to last.
And its not just about the humour either. Along with the constant silly little moments on which the film shines there is bountiful heart; enough emotion in one scene in particular to bring moistness to a mans dry old tear ducts. Heart and humour drive this film onward to great heights; are ever presents in this Aardman Animation gem of a film. It continues on from the Wallace And Gromit classics of the past, builds on the Shaun The Sheep series on childrens TV (Albeit, one I haven't seen) and is arguably as good as anything that has come out of the stop-motion company in its entire life span.
It's not without I suppose, weak points. The plot is solidly basic, granted; sheep going into the city to find their lost Farmer, pretty usual, nothing overly new or genre bending. But then it's a children's film and so it is understandable, and definitely forgivable considering everything else. This reviewer could also be completely wrong about his opinion, having seen it on a good day, having been wanting to see it, being a lover of Shaun The Sheep from his first appearance in Wallace And Gromit: A Close Shave. It was a strange experience by the way, to see Shaun older, growing a sort of wild old man hair before he is unceremoniously shaved by the Farmer at the start of the film.
That said, going into a film with high expectations (seeing it after seeing the 100% Rotten Tomatoes rating) is one thing. Having the film soar above those expectations is quite something else. It is simply a lovely film to watch from start to end, funny, adorable, full of heart, full of memorable little moments. It even has a good villain; Mr Trumper, who takes his animal containment job all too seriously.
In my view it would deserve to win an Animation award hands down; I haven't seen Inside Out yet which is supposed to be fantastic and there are of course six months to go. But Shaun The Sheep is a unique little treasure, and to see it missed out would be a travesty. It would also prove, as if anyone needed the proof, that the awards season has a very short memory.
Shaun The Sheep is really, really good, as I may have said several times. Give it a shot and see what you think.
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