It sounds like a typically eccentric Aardman joke. Tucked away near the end of the credits for Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom is a mention of the film’s Puppet Wrangler. They’re not kidding. It’s somebody who looks after both the mechanics of the stop-motion cast and their appearance, such as skin, costume and, perhaps most importantly for Shaun’s latest outing, hair. Given all the delightful craziness on screen, it’s probably the busiest job on the set.

With the imminent arrival of Hallowe’en, Shaun (the voice of Justin Fletcher) and the flock are growing pumpkins, but their patch is a closely guarded secret. When the Farmer (voiced by John Sparkes) accidentally destroys the entire crop, Shaun retreats to his lab in the farm’s deserted windmill and concocts a potion to grow a new supply at a rate of knots from one solitary seed. The new pumpkins grow like crazy, but things go horribly wrong, and suddenly a beast is trampling through Mossingham’s woods and scaring all the residents. The Farmer, in the meantime, has disappeared and, as the Beast runs riot through the town, the newly arrived vet (the voice of Baby Reindeer‘s Nina Sosanya) comes to its rescue, much to the anger of the townsfolk (voiced by the likes of Heckle‘s Dani Dyer and Ghost Stories’ Paul Whitehouse), and she sets about getting it to safety.

All the Aardman boxes are well, and truly ticked. The film is brim-full of running gags, concealed jokes that you might not notice the first time round, nostalgia, high-speed chases and a warm-hearted appeal that’s hard to resist. You can see the gags coming a mile off, and that’s all part of the fun. As ever, the film taps into the kid inside us, so while the lion’s share of the jokes will land with older audience members, the children will lap up the silliness and a hint of goosebumps. Compared to the stable’s previous offerings, however, The Beast of Mossy Bottom has fewer cinematic easter eggs, which have become such an integral part of its style. The Hallowe’en setting means throwbacks to Hammer and horror B-movies, while Shaun’s laboratory strongly echoes the more recent Frankenstein. Best of all is a moment that brings together the screeching strings of Psycho and a bit of dental floss.

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But the shadows of the studio’s most famous double act, Wallace and his faithful – and smarter – hound, Gromit, loom larger than usual this time. It’s as if a storyline once intended for them has been tweaked and relocated to Mossy Bottom. Shaun made his first appearance alongside the residents of 62 West Wallaby Street in 1995’s A Close Shave, graduating to the big screen twenty years later in Shaun the Sheep Movie. He’s always been creative, recycling all kinds of junk and turning it into something useful, which partly explains a wicked little dig at The Wombles. But now he’s a fully-fledged inventor, experimenting with science, and his contraptions have Wallace’s chubby fingerprints all over them. And, in true Aardman tradition, they have a habit of going wrong or, at the very least, causing chaos.

As The Beast of Mossy Bottom enters its final phase, it starts to run out of breath after all the frantic action and only just makes it over the line. This time round, the laughs are a touch less frequent and more likely to be giggles than loud guffaws. And, with Shaun having crossed the dividing line between himself and Wallace and Gromit, you can’t help but wonder what his future holds. We already know he has more than enough personality to make it on his own – with some help from the flock, of course – without regular reminders of Aardman’s other big franchise. That fleeting glimpse of a certain nefarious penguin in the vet’s surgery is perhaps more than we need.

★★★

In cinemas from September 18th / The voices of Justin Fletcher, John Sparkes, Nina Sosanya, Dani Dyer, Roman Kemp, Paul Whitehouse and Kate Harbour / Dirs: Steve Cox, Matthew Walker / Sky Cinema and StudioCanal / U

About the Author

Freda Cooper

Editor

Freda is a Senior Writer at The People's Movies. A lifelong movie fan and a film critic for over ten years, Freda’s natural habitat is the darkened rooms frequented by fellow cineastes. She can also be found asking questions of some of the biggest names in the business – from Cate Blanchett to Daniel Craig or Mike Leigh to Pete Docter – or crafting reviews for a number of sites and publications, including The People’s Movies. And listeners to BBC Local Radio can catch her views on the latest releases. She always – and probably always will – cite The Third Man as her favourite film of all time. Her top ten? That’s a moveable feast …..

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