Cert – U, Run-time – 1 hour 20 minutes, Directors – Steve Cox, Matthew Walker
When a strong growth formula for pumpkins is mistakenly used by the farmer (John Sparkes) for hair growth he’s soon mistaken by the nearby town for a bigfoot-style monster, it’s up to Shaun (Justin Fletcher) and the other sheep to s(h)ave him.
When Aardman have a genre they love to pay homage to their best work often comes out. See Curse Of The Were-Rabbit or previous Shaun The Sheep feature outing Farmageddon. In the case of the follow-up to the latter, The Beast Of Mossy Bottom, once the creature feature B-movie stylings come into play there are plenty of slapstick chuckles to be found.
Yes, the same tab A into slot A narrative structure is present that builds up in the first 15 minutes or so, but that’s not why we watch these films, we watch them for the silly humour that runs throughout them. Additionally, for the craft that goes into them. You might not be able to see the fingerprints on the models as much as you could 15-20 years ago, but you can still feel the effort that’s gone into the stop-motion style. Specifically crafting the timing of a gag – one chase sequence is paused à la the Were-Rabbit dogfight just so those involved can overtake a cyclist in the road – and its slapstick components for gags for all-ages.
Once The Farmer (John Sparkes) has started terrorising the streets of Mossingham after being turned into a bigfoot-style monster the creature feature conventions are brought in with plenty of gags surrounding them, with a clear love from the filmmakers for them – although perhaps not quite in the same way as aforementioned claymation flicks from the studio. The cause of the sprouting hair is a mistaken bottle of hair growth formula which actually contains a mixture created by Shaun (Justin Fletcher) for pumpkins, after a secret patch set up by the sheep is destroyed early on. All the set up and the various angles takes a bit of time, but once all in place the studio is on their usual, still very British but universally enjoyable, form.
There’s a call back to classic silent slapstick inspirations, but still light jokes about influencers that don’t feel out of place amongst these points. This is still a film where an angry mob forms chasing a ball of hair, identified as the farmer as he still wears his glasses, through the town until they stop at the locked vet and get through via the cat flap. There’s plenty of homage-based silliness that makes these films what they are, and allows things to flow and simply make for an entertaining 80-minutes, especially once the flow of the film is dictated by the jokes rather than narrative or set-up, once in place the film knows it can keep things simple and just have fun with the ideas and moments that it’s throwing out, especially with these characters and making a universal film.
There may not quite be anything on the same level as the start-to-finish hilarity of Farmageddon, but The Beast Of Mossy Bottom has plenty of good chuckles along the way. None more so than when the Aardman crew truly get into the genre that they’ve been inspired by, or are fully immersed in a particular moment and the craft behind a gag. It takes some time to get going, but once it does there’s plenty to enjoy about a film that may not quite roar, but certainly leaves its humorous mark.
Aardman continues to work best when working with genres they love and are inspired by, The Beast Of Mossy Bottom might take a little bit of time to get to that full immersion, but once it does there’s plenty of chuckles to be had at the finely crafted and timed silliness on display.
