Farmageddon

Stars: Voices: Justin Fletcher, John Sparkes, Kate Harbour, Joe Sugg

Director: Will Becher, Richard Phelan

The gags come thick and fast in this new adventure of the wily and inventive Shaun the Sheep and his woolly followers, not to mention Bitzer the farm dog who tries to keep them in line.

It's good fun throughout rather than laugh-out-loud funny, with just a little dull bit towards the end.

A spacecraft lands near Mossy Bottom Farm and a baby alien, Lu-La, steps out. Hotly pursued by both Bitzer and an evil-looking lady scientist, the little blue alien with four floppy arms is soon in cahoots with Shaun, wrecking the local supermarket and stuffing itself with so many sweets and pizzas as to produce the world's biggest burp.

All good things, however, must come to an end, as all Lu-La, like ET, really wants, is to go home.

The occasionally hilarious frolics that follow are packed with references to other sci-fi icons that you'll have a hard time keeping up with. There's 2001, ET itself, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the Amblin logo, Doctor Who and even Charlie Chaplin - plus the briefest of guest appearances from Wallace and Gromit, as the harumphing Farmer turns Mossy Bottom Farm into a tourist attraction for UFO fanatics.

The musical interludes seem to belong to another film, but even so, children of all ages from six to 60 will have a lot of fun with this one.

David Quinlan

UK/France 2019. UK Distributor: StudioCanal. Technicolor.
87 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: U.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 0, Violence/Horror 0, Drugs 0, Swearing 0.

Review date: 14 Oct 2019