A Shaun The Sheep Movie: Farmageddon

image for A Shaun The Sheep Movie: Farmageddon

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Parental guidance under 5; suitable for ages 5 and over (slapstick violence, sad and scary scenes)

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This topic contains:

  • overall comments and recommendations
  • details of classification and consumer advice lines for A Shaun The Sheep Movie: Farmageddon
  • a review of A Shaun The Sheep Movie: Farmageddon completed by the Australian Council on Children and the Media (ACCM) on 13 January 2020.

Overall comments and recommendations

Children under 5 Parental guidance recommended due to slapstick violence, sad themes (separation from parents, saying farewell to friends) and scary scenes.
Children aged 5 and over Ok for this age group.

About the movie

This section contains details about the movie, including its classification by the Australian Government Classification Board and the associated consumer advice lines. Other classification advice (OC) is provided where the Australian film classification is not available.

Name of movie: A Shaun The Sheep Movie: Farmageddon
Classification: G
Consumer advice lines: General
Length: 87 minutes

ACCM review

This review of the movie contains the following information:

A synopsis of the story

Shaun the Sheep (voiced by Justin Fletcher) and his friends are bored: it is difficult to have a bit of fun under the watchful eyes of the farm's herding dog. The farm animals' routine is shaken up one night when Lu-La (voiced by Amalia Vitale), a mysterious extra-terrestrial creature, shows up at the farm. Shaun and his friends soon discover that Lu-La is friendly, playful, always hungry, and in need of help: She has to get back to her spaceship so she can return to her home planet and her parents. Matters get complicated when Agent Red (Kate Harbour), an ambitious UFO-hunting agent, arrives to capture the alien. Everyone must work together and make use of Lu-La's teleporting powers so she can be reunited with her parents.

Themesinfo

Children and adolescents may react adversely at different ages to themes of crime, suicide, drug and alcohol dependence, death, serious illness, family breakdown, death or separation from a parent, animal distress or cruelty to animals, children as victims, natural disasters and racism. Occasionally reviews may also signal themes that some parents may simply wish to know about.

Friendship; teamwork; bravery; cleverness; resourcefulness; importance of family.

Use of violenceinfo

Research shows that children are at risk of learning that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution when violence is glamourised, performed by an attractive hero, successful, has few real life consequences, is set in a comic context and / or is mostly perpetrated by male characters with female victims, or by one race against another.

Repeated exposure to violent content can reinforce the message that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution. Repeated exposure also increases the risks that children will become desensitised to the use of violence in real life or develop an exaggerated view about the prevalence and likelihood of violence in their own world.

There is some slapstick violence in this movie where no one gets seriously hurt or injured, including:

  • The herding dog is hit in the face by a Frisbee and food.
  • Shaun is trampled over by the other sheep.
  • Pigs are flung through the air and then fall on the ground.
  • Someone is hit in the face with a pie.
  • Shaun and Lu-La recklessly drive a harvester and crash it.
  • Characters get buried under heavy objects.
  • Characters hit their heads and run into things.
  • Characters fall over.

Material that may scare or disturb children

Under fiveinfo

Children under five are most likely to be frightened by scary visual images, such as monsters, physical transformations.

In addition to the above-mentioned violent scenes, there are some scenes in this movie that could scare or disturb children under the age of five, including the following:

  • At the start of the movie, a man is walking his dog at night and sees a UFO land in the forest. It is unclear who or what will exit the UFO. The man gets very scared and runs away in panic. The lighting is quite dark and young children may find this scene spooky.
  • There are a few scenes where the so-far-unidentified alien is lurking in the bushes. These scenes are a bit suspenseful and scary.
  • Agent Red can transform her van into a scary-looking robot. She tries to catch Shaun and Lu-La with the robot's big claw hands.
  • Lu-La is separated from her parents. Later, Lu-La and Shaun accidentally crash her spaceship and she is scared that she may never see her parents again.
  • When the farm animals have to say good-bye to Lu-La, Shaun gets emotional and sheds a few tears.

Aged five to eightinfo

Children aged five to eight will also be frightened by scary visual images and will also be disturbed by depictions of the death of a parent, a child abandoned or separated from parents, children or animals being hurt or threatened and / or natural disasters.

In addition to the above-mentioned violent scenes and scary visual images, there are some scenes in this movie that could scare or disturb children aged five to eight, including the following:

  • Children aged five to eight may get scared or upset by some of the above-mentioned scenes.

Aged eight to thirteeninfo

Children aged eight to thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic threats and dangers, violence or threat of violence and / or stories in which children are hurt or threatened.

  • Nothing further of concern.

Product placement

  • None noted.

Sexual references

  • None noted.

Nudity and sexual activity

There is some nudity in this movie, including:

  • The farmer is seen wearing a jumper, jocks and socks, but no pants.
  • In order to explain about planet Earth, Agent Red's assistants show a drawing of a man and a woman in the nude, however, the private parts are covered by fingers.
  • During the end credits, the Farmer's bare backside is visible very briefly.

Use of substances

  • None noted.

Coarse language

  • None noted.

In a nutshell

A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon, like the previous Shaun the Sheep movie and TV series, is stop-motion entertainment with no dialogue – characters communicate non-verbally and with sounds. Containing a lot of funny scenes and many positive messages, the film is suitable for a family audience, though parental guidance is recommended for children under 5.

The main messages from this movie are that you can be friends even if you come from very different places and that you can achieve great things when you work together.

Values in this movie that parents may wish to reinforce with their children include:

  • friendship
  • helping one another
  • working together
  • family
  • overcoming differences
  • understanding other people's perspectives.

This movie could also give parents the opportunity to discuss with their children attitudes and behaviours, and their real-life consequences, such as:

  • Bullying: it is revealed that Agent Red is so bitter and desperate to capture the alien because when she was a little girl she had an encounter with aliens but no one believed her and she was laughed at and ridiculed.
  • The risks and potentially dire consequences of children attempting to do adult things: Lu-La got separated from her parents and stranded on Earth because she secretly took her parents' keys for the spaceship and accidentally launched it.
  • Not listening: Lu-La's space ship crashed because Shaun kept on pressing buttons, even though he was told not to do so. He realises this and regrets that he did not listen.