No words needed to tell this story
“Shaun the Sheep,” the new movie from Aardman Animations, doesn’t have a word of spoken dialogue. But the screenplay, by the writer-director team of Mark Burton and Richard Starzak, paints a vivid picture of the world its fluffy stars inhabit.
In the movie, Shaun and the flock, including their sheepdog Bitzer, leave the comfortable tedium of farm life to rescue their farmer, who is lost in the big city and suffering from amnesia.
In this excerpt, Shaun has been captured by an animal control officer named Trumper and is making a grim prison walk. As he moves through the cages, he passes a harmonica-playing goldfish, a tortoise counting off the days and a Hannibal Lecter-like cat, before arriving at a cell to find Bitzer.
EXT. ESTABLISHER — ANIMAL CONTAINMENT CENTRE — DAY
A grim, modern, klink-like building, with CCTV cams etc. Trumper’s vehicle parked near the entrance.
SFX (pre-lap) PRISON STYLE ENTRY DOOR BUZZ
INT. ANIMAL CONTAINMENT CENTRE — DAY
On Shaun as the bars of the security door slide back. He looks down the grim line of cages and gulps.
Trumper escorts him past various captured animals.
In one cage, a rottweiler leans its paws through the bars. It has BARK and BITE tattooed on them. Next to him, a musclebound POODLE works out with a ham bone.
In another glass-fronted cage, a cat with a neck collar sniffs Shaun’s scent like Hannibal Lecter.
In other cages: An old TORTOISE adds a new notch to a long line of notches on the wall (counting off the days).
A GOLDFISH mournfully plays the harmonica, which it hastily hides as Trumper approaches.