Best kids movie of the school holidays goes to Shaun the Sheep!

REVIEW: Be still, our bleating hearts! Shaun the Sheep has finally been given his own movie, and it scores a telling victory.

Shaun the Sheep: The Movie (G)

Directors: Mark Burton, Richard Starzak

Starring: the voices of Justin Fletcher, John Sparkes, Omid Djamili, Richard Webber, Kate Harbour.

Rating : ****

Raising the baa

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Be still, our bleating hearts!

Shaun the Sheep has finally been given his own movie, and it scores a telling victory for this winningly winsome woolly jumper.

For it was 20 years ago that the movie biz first took a gambol on young Shaun as a bit-part player in Wallace and Gromit’s Oscar-winning short A Close Shave.

Some 100-plus solo TV shows since has Shaun and the Mossy Bottom Farm posse more than ready for their big-screen bow.

Shaun the Sheep Movie is in cinemas these Easter School Holidays. Picture: StudioCanal

The end result is a relentless delight, without doubt the pick of the bunch for youngsters hitting the cinema this school holidays.

Considering the average episodic adventure for Shaun on TV runs about seven minutes long, it is remarkable how well he fares in feature-length mode.

The ever-inventive stop-motion claymation of Aardman Studios holds the key.

There’s always something happening somewhere in every single frame of an Aardman production, and the in-jokes and out-there flights of fancy just never let up.

Simple and effective ... a scene from the Shaun the Sheep.

The story is a simple affair: very easy to follow, yet very involving from the get-go.

Shaun and the gang hatch a scheme to score a lazy day off by keeping their employer The Farmer asleep for as long as possible.

The plan goes quickly haywire when The Farmer cops a knock to the noggin, which turns him into an amnesiac wandering aimlessly in The Big City.

Shaun and the Mossy Bottom mob have no choice but to travel into the metropolis themselves, and then straighten out a mess of their own making.

Just like the recent Paddington movie, Shaun the Sheep keeps hustling and bustling for funnier, more memorable pay-offs to each scene, and invariably finds them.

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