Much of the charm and delight missing from children’s animated films this year makes a belated arrival in “Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom.”

Yes, it’s an aimated franchise and yes, there’s even been a VERY long-running TV series. So you’d think the Great Brits at Aardman Animation would be slap out of ideas for their mischievous, clever and non-speaking sheep, his fellow lambs, rams and ewes and every other non-speaker at the farm — animal and human — where he carries on.

But the short answer to that is no, they haven’t.

The trick seems to be to always augment a Shaun veteran with a new Brit wit in the script department. “The Beast of Mossy Bottom” pairs up Mark Burton, who’s had an Oscar nomination from working on both the “Shaun” and Aardman’s later “Wallace & Gromit” films as well as “Madagascar” and the “Paddington” bear comedies. Bringing in “Horrible History” alumnus Giles Pilbrow (the perfeect name for anybody assigned to write for Stephen Fry) pays off with with I expect will wind up being the year’s most adorable kiddie comedy.

The plot has Shaun dabbling in “mad science” from this “Homemade Science” textbook he’s gotten his hooves on with an eye to rapidly replacing the farm’s crop of pumpkins, ruined by the clumsy farmer just before Halloween. The pumpkins sprout and ripen and swell and swell and swell overnight.

But the farmer accidentally confuses the pumpkin-growing fertilizer for hair growing tonic that will get him a date with the cute veterinarian for the Mossington “Halloween Hoedown.”

The balding redhead furs up to such an extent that he’s mistaken for Bigfoot. The locals are up in arms, the vet wants to figure out what the huge hairy beast is and Shaun is put in the spot of making all that he’s messed up right again.

There are sheep doing the “Thriller” dance and “Psycho” and “Halloween” horror movie references, of course. The “mad sheep scientist” bits are straight out of every “Frankenstein” picture, right down to the windmill powered tech.

The villagers break out the pitchforks, scythes and tridents — plastic ones from the Halloween store — to chase The Beast. Some are holding torches — in one case, that’s a selfie stick with a cellphone whose screen has a flame from a torch on it.

One chef’s kiss moment has our hapless balding farmer accidentally rub under his nose after applying hair balm. Two tiny halves of a ginger mustache promptly sprout.

These movies have always appealed to eight and unders the most. But adults taking them to the cinema will be tickled too, as there are a lot more laughs — all of them coming from sight gags — in this “Beast” than the recent “Minions,” “Toy Story” and “Super Mario Bros.” blockbusters.

I don’t know if GKid their new studio, is advertising this in the right places. But take this review as a warning. You don’t want your 4-8 year-ld to miss out on Shaun as he strikes again.

Rating: G

Credits: Directed by Steve Cox and Matthew Walker, scripted by Mark Burton and Giles Pilbrow. An Aardman/GKids release.

Running time: 1:20