"Adorable, Entertaining Science Fiction for Families"

None | Light | Moderate | Heavy | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Language | ||||
Violence | ||||
Sex | ||||
Nudity |
What You Need To Know:
Now streaming on Netflix, FARMAGEDDON is so much fun and so funny it should be in theaters. It’s one of the most family-friendly Netflix movies. It is delightfully pro-family, pro-love, pro-forgiveness, with even a nod to a church bellringer and organist. It is fun without having any mean-spirited elements. Beyond the fun, it’s got strong heartrending moments. The filmmakers of FARMAGEDDON have orchestrated the emotional roller coaster of the movie perfectly. Their movie never gets maudlin or melodramatic. FARMAGEDDON is also a wonderful spoof of many well-known science fiction movies. Minor caution is advised for some slapstick comedy.
Content:
More Detail:
A SHAUN THE SHEEP MOVIE: FARMAGEDDON is another great, funny, heartwarming, delightful Aardman Studio stop motion family cartoon. Now playing on Netflix, FARMAGEDDON is full of fun and fantasy that will appeal to all ages, as well as science fiction references that will appeal to adults.
The movie opens in Mussingham Forrest near where the Farmer lives with his very cagey sheep and his sheepdog, Bitzer, at Mossy Bottom Farm. With an opening shot of H.G. Wheels Auto, referencing one of the first science fiction authors, H.G. Wells, a man and his dog exit a fast food establishment and walk into the woods. Suddenly, a flying saucer lands. The man and his dog are frightened, and the alien, whom the audience doesn’t see for a while, eats some of the man’s french fries. The alien then visits the fast food drive-in, where Shaun and the other sheep have ordered pizza by sneaking into the farmer’s house and using his computer. The pizza delivery boy gets on his scooter with three boxes, and the alien hides in the satchel carrying the pizza.
When the delivery boy delivers the pizza to the sheep, who are disguised as a human being in a trench coat, Bitzer catches them and takes two of the boxes to the Farmer, who finds out the boxes are empty. The Farmer blames the sheepdog, Bitzer, who return to the sheep in the barn to complain with the boxes bashed over his head. As the sheep try to play Frisbee, drive the tractor and try to do other things to find excitement on the farm, Bitzer tries to control them by putting up signs outlawing Frisbee playing, tractor driving and barbequing with signs that look like visual road signs.
Meanwhile, Shaun discovers the alien, and by following the trail of leftover pizza, and also finds the alien is friendly and loves pizza. They team up to find the alien’s saucer, with lots of adventures on the way heightened by the alien’s ability to telepathically raise objects and do other alien tricks.
Meanwhile, a very dour female government UFO officer is searching for the alien and the flying saucer because of all the newspaper accounts of the alien. At the same time, the Farmer gets the crazy idea to build a UFO theme park with a big lattice structure capped with the sign “Farmageddon.” He recruits Bitzer to build the theme park, and Bitzer recruits the sheep. On the way to the spaceship, the alien finds a grocery store where he devours all of the candy and soft drinks, despite Shaun’s admonition not to do that, so he gets sick and wreaks havoc in the story.
Eventually, after many adventures including taking a bull and dumping him into a china shop, they get captured by the government and hauled off to a secret UFO facility. Shaun and the alien try to recover the saucer controller from the mean government official, Shaun discovers something very heartrending about the alien. At the same time, the audience finds out that, as a little girl, the government official saw two aliens, but when she told her school class, everybody laughed at her. So, all her life has been dedicated to proving she was right.
Everything comes to a head at the farmer’s silly theme park, where he charges the locals 20 British Pounds to see very silly UFO games and a kitschy UFO theme play. However, in the midst of the audience booing, the government, the flying saucer, the alien, the farmer, the dog, and the sheep get involved in a tremendous science fiction spoof, with lights and silly activities.
FARMAGEDDON is so much fun and so funny that it should be in theaters. It’s one of the most family-friendly Netflix movies ever. It is delightfully pro-family, pro-love, pro-forgiveness, with even a nod to a church bellringer and organist. It is fun without having any meanspirited elements. Beyond the fun, it’s got strong heartrending moments. In fact, the characters are so well drawn that they remind you of the foibles of real people in your own life. Walt Disney once noted that for every laugh, there has to be a tear, and for every tear, there has to be a laugh. The filmmakers of FARMAGEDDON have orchestrated the emotional roller coaster of the movie perfectly. Their movie never gets maudlin or melodramatic. If you love science fiction, it’s a wonderful spoof of many well-known science fiction movies. That said, there are some cartoon pratfalls, slapstick comedy and action, which would be hard for anyone to think about emulating, but give the movie a slight caution, so you can have fun watching it with your children while explaining that they shouldn’t do things they wouldn’t do anyway.