Everybody loves Aardman Animation. Nobody cares about their movies. Not their more recent ones, anyway.

Ask anyone of millennial age or older, and it’s a safe bet that all of them will hold at least a little nostalgic love for Wallace and Gromit. And I’d dare say that Chicken Run holds up as an animated classic. But the studio hasn’t had such stellar luck of late.

Granted, the Chicken Run sequel was a doomed attempt at nostalgia-baiting, following-up on a movie that didn’t want or need a sequel. And yes, the studio suffered unavoidable drawbacks when their studio burned down and their most iconic voice actor died. But then there’s Shaun the Sheep.

Ten years out from the first Shaun the Sheep movie, and nobody talks enough about how brilliant and funny and charming it was. What’s worse, Shaun the Sheep: Farmageddon only got an online release mere weeks before COVID lockdown, so I doubt there’s anyone in the USA with any idea there was ever a second movie at all!

And here we are with Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom, a third movie thrown out with the smallest possible “wide” release and the bare minimum of advertising. And once again, we get further proof of how criminally underappreciated this franchise is.

(Side note: No, it hasn’t escaped my notice that two of the best family comedies we’ve seen this year were British films about sheep. Pray that Hollywood doesn’t take notice and flood the market.)

Note that there’s no spoken dialogue except for grunts, sighs, screams, garbled shouting, etc. As such, I won’t be crediting the voice actors like I typically do. I might further add that virtually none of the characters have proper names.

Yet even with those limitations, it’s astounding how much gets packed into these 80 minutes. Through music, sound effects, inspired animation, and wickedly clever writing, the filmmakers repeatedly prove themselves masters at conveying 15 minutes of plot in five minutes of runtime. The unfortunate downside is that I can’t possibly recap the plot in any way that makes it sound as coherent or enjoyable as the actual movie. I’m going to try my best, but you’ll have to take my word and trust me that the whole thing makes perfect sense in context.

We open with Shaun and the rest of his flock, painstakingly growing their own pumpkins for Halloween. But they have to keep the patch a secret, lest the klutzy Farmer come along and destroy everything. Long story short, the Farmer is literally dragged into the pumpkin patch at top speed and proceeds to accidentally destroy it.

Another few comical plot contrivances later, Shaun refashions himself into a mad scientist and brews up a potion that will grow super-large pumpkins at a super-fast rate. Which effectively turns the new pumpkins into time bombs. And that’s not even the worst of it.

While all that’s going on, the Farmer is pursuing a love interest (more on her later), and he keeps getting in his own way because he’s insecure about his hair loss. One thing leads to another and Shaun’s potion grows out the Farmer’s hair at such an uncontrollable rate that he becomes a freaking Sasquatch. Thus Shaun has to try and fix his own mess and we’re off to the races.

From start to finish, the film makes extensive use of imagery and iconography pulled from various retro horror films and monsters. There’s a Psycho reference that’s particularly amusing, which is quite an accomplishment, considering how many times the shower scene has been spoofed to death. But what makes this film so special is in how it balances horror/comedy in such a way as to keep everything fresh and funny, without any threat of turning away or scaring younger kids.

For instance, a central throughline of the movie concerns Shaun and his ill-fated attempts to resolve everything through mad science. Invariably, every last one of his inventions blows up in his face and makes everything worse. At least, until he learns enough to stop trying so hard and let the more simple-minded sheep (literally and figuratively) help out a little bit. This is well-worn material for horror/sci-fi genre fare — most especially Victor Frankenstein, the great-grandaddy of horror/sci-fi — and the film co-opts that genre imagery while playing up the mad science blunders for comedy. It works surprisingly well.

Then we have the Farmer. The thing about this particular monster is that we know full well he isn’t a monster at all. Sure, he’s clumsy to the point where he’s a plausible danger to himself and others, but he certainly doesn’t mean any harm to anyone. Thus as a cinematic monster in the functional sense (i.e. a figure to scare the audience by threatening the other characters), he’s fundamentally broken. And sure, this means the “horror” aspect of the film is fundamentally broken.

And yet, it’s important to remember that nobody outside the flock knows any of this. As far as anyone else is concerned, the Farmer is some big scary monster that looks threatening. And we know that’s only because he’s too oblivious to know any better. Thus we have comedy borne of dramatic irony.

Moreover, as the film unfolds and the Farmer unwittingly stirs up a violent mob of people with no idea who or what they’re really chasing, the Farmer effectively becomes a sympathetic monster. He directly takes on the function and iconography of monsters like — again — Frankenstein’s monster, or some cinematic iterations of werewolves. This is yet another way in which the film works as an effective comedy by way of horror imagery.

Speaking of which, I’d be remiss not to mention the Vet, our love interest for the Farmer. What’s neat about this character is that while she’s technically an antagonist, she’s not at all a bad person. Yes, animals run away from her in terror, but that’s only because they’re animals and she’s a veterinarian. It’s nothing personal. Indeed, the Vet repeatedly shows that she’s deeply and sincerely concerned with the well-being of animals. She loves what she does, and she’s damned good at it, which always makes for an engaging character.

Also, it’s the Vet who first takes it on herself to track down and capture the new Sasquatch. (Completely unaware that it’s the Farmer, who’s desperately terrified of his crush seeing him like this.) Crucially, she’s not out to dissect or exploit or sell this new creature in any way. There’s nothing selfish or sinister in her motives, nothing unreasonably irresponsible in her methods. She’s a scientist, and she want to learn more about this new discovery without directly harming anyone. In fact, it’s interesting to compare/contrast the moral and ethical science of the Vet against Shaun’s reckless mad science.

Though I do question why this rural veterinarian has access to a DNA scanner straight out of Star Trek, but whatever.

Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom was marketed as a horror film (to the extent that it was marketed at all), but it’s an abject failure as a horror film and a better movie for it. Instead, what we’ve got here is a movie about monsters and mad scientists that are nowhere near as scary as they first appear. The only legitimate threat here is the panicked mob of villagers, which makes for a subtle and positive kid-friendly theme in and of itself.

This isn’t really a horror/comedy so much as it’s a comedy with horror trappings. More of a horror parody, in point of fact. Thus the film leans into the strengths of its franchise, delivering something charming and clever and heartfelt with a “classic horror movie monster” motif to keep things fresh. As with so much of the movie, it’s ingenious in a way that I can’t sufficiently describe.

This is turning out to be a damn fine year in animation, and we’ve got another solid animated film to celebrate. This is a funny, inventive, brilliant film that needs more love than it’s getting. Strongly recommended.