Sheep and Wolves: Pig Deal review – animated fable is shorn of excitement
A hair of the dog that no one ordered, here’s a sequel to the ropey Russian family animation Sheep and Wolves, in which predator and prey learned to live together in happy-clappy vegetarian harmony. Not improving much on the original, the new film is unimaginatively scripted with dull characters and second-rate animation – the wolves’ plasticky manes are as realistic as a Primark fur coat.
One year on from the first movie, the wolves have settled into a life of utopian bliss with their woolly friends. The village leader is the wolf Grey (voiced by Graham Halstead), now happily married to foxy Bianca (the anthropomorphic animation gets a bit iffy with her slinky hourglass figure and glossily blowdried blue fur). But their way of life is under threat from a neighbouring pack of tough-guy wolves who reckon Grey is giving carnivores a bad name. The community decides to stand up to the bullies, but a traitor in their midst is sabotaging efforts to defend themselves.
There are a couple of enjoyable moments. The drill sergeant ram put in charge of whipping the sheep into a battle-ready army is a nice bit of character animation, done with an almost Wes Anderson-ish eccentricity. But the movie is fairly low on the food chain of summer entertainment. In ordinary summer holidays this is the kind of film that parents and carers might stumble in to watch at the cinema after their 67th trip to the park. But with many cinemas still closed and plenty of people preferring to stay away anyway, I can’t see who would choose to download this at home – especially when you can wolf down Disney’s entire back catalogue on its streaming channel.
Sheep and Wolves: Pig Deal is available on digital platforms from 10 August.