Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom<\/a>. At first, things are only slightly awry as Shaun and the flock are growing a secret pumpkin patch to have their own jack-o-lanterns. But when the farmer accidentally destroys the pumpkin patch, Shaun tries to regrow it quickly with a Frankenstein-esque experiment.<\/p>\nHowever, disaster looms when Shaun uses an old bottle of Hair-Gro as the container for the serum he creates. Naturally, the balding farmer uses it on his head, and everyone soon discovers how truly successful it is, with pumpkins growing out of control and the farmer sprouting hair all over his body. Through a series of mishaps, the farmer becomes the titular beast, creating mayhem while Shaun and others try to stop him.<\/p>\n
Directed by Steve Cox and Matthew Walker, and written by Mark Burton and Giles Pilbrow, the film goes down just as easy as every other Aardman project has. They get the Halloween vibes started from the opening credits, with things like the sheep doing the \u201cThriller\u201d dance, and continue the fun throughout, referencing everything from Psycho to Friday the 13th in a nice, PG way.<\/p>\n
With no script \u2014 every character is mute save for reaction noises \u2014 the movie relies on sight gags for its humor, and the Aardman team is endlessly inventive in that respect. Sometimes it\u2019s small things like a sheep using toilet paper rolls as binoculars, and sometimes it\u2019s something like forcing the Bigfoot-like farmer to be shaped into a rectangle as he escapes through a window. But there\u2019s a never-ending stream of such moments, so even if one doesn\u2019t tickle your funny bone, chances are the next one will.<\/p>\n
The biggest benefit of the characters not talking is that there\u2019s no need for deep character development. The filmmakers do a great job of giving the basic traits of each character, and then use those attributes to color everyone\u2019s actions for the rest of the film. Shaun is the troublemaker, the farmer is a bumbling fool, Bitzer is preternaturally smart, and the town\u2019s vet is empathetic, and the combination of those characters and others makes for a highly entertaining blend.<\/p>\n
Like all Aardman creations, Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom is a fun lark that doesn\u2019t make its audience think too hard. With just enough references to keep viewers engaged but not so many as to be overbearing, the film puts its well-worn characters to good use once again, delivering a Halloween season story that can be enjoyed by people of all ages.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom is now playing in theaters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since his introduction over 30 years ago, the Aardman Animations character Shaun the Sheep has been almost as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":440421,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[575,102,104,103,574,18795,13527],"class_list":["post-440420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-concerts","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-live-music","tag-the-bomb-factory","tag-tours"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440420\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}