The buzz on “The Sheep Detectives” was that it’s a cross between “Babe” and “Knives Out.” Turns out, the buzz is true.
Hugh Jackman plays George, a shepherd tending his flock in an idyllic, isolated meadow in the fictional English village of Denbrook. A loner who lives in a camper, George is surly to neighboring townspeople but infinitely protective of his sheep, whom he raises only for their wool. His favorite nighttime activity is reading detective novels aloud to the herd before bedtime, despite knowing they can’t comprehend his words.
Except they do. The sheep, rendered in the film as photorealistic animated creations, don’t converse with humans but talk openly with each other. Lily (voiced by Julia-Louis Dreyfus) is the smartest of the bunch: She routinely figures out whodunit long before George finishes up. When he is mysteriously murdered about 20 minutes into the movie, it is Lily who leads the charge to collar the culprit.
Why We Wrote This
“The Sheep Detectives” unfolds a murder mystery in which a flock searches for its shepherd’s killer. Raised on detective novels read aloud by their caretaker, the sheep scour the countryside for clues in a film that entertains children and adults.
Kyle Balda, making his live-action directorial debut after helming the “Minions” animated films and “Despicable Me 3,” sustains a fanciful comic tone despite its rueful underpinnings. The sheeps’ love for George is the heart and soul of the story. Working from a script by Craig Mazin – based on Leonie Swann’s best-selling German novel “Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story” – Balda ensures the narrative never cloys. It’s not anthropomorphism that we are witnessing, exactly. These sheep – who also include Lily’s ally Sebastian (Bryan Cranston), the extra shaggy Wool-Eyes (Rhys Darby), and the elder statesman Sir Ritchfield (Patrick Stewart) – are as fully “human” as the eccentric gaggle of townspeople with whom they are reluctantly impelled to interact.
Topping the list of eccentrics is Tim Derry (Nicholas Braun), the bumbling local police officer who is poleaxed by the prospect of solving a murder case. Having to prove himself fills him with foreboding. Somewhat easing his anxieties is the entrance of George’s fetching, estranged daughter, Rebecca Hampstead (Molly Gordon). But because she is poised to receive a huge sum from George’s will, she is also, alas, the prime suspect. (Ham Gilyard, the garrulous local butcher played by Conleth Hill, would seem too obvious a candidate).
The reading of that will is, of course, standard Agatha Christie stuff, as Lily well knows. Another essential murder mystery trope is the obligatory outsider, in the guise of Elliot Matthews (Nicholas Galitzine), a nosy newspaper reporter. Presiding over the will’s reading is Lydia Harbottle, who arrives in the quaint village in a black chauffeured limo and is played by Emma Thompson with a crispness every bit as tailored as her suits. Has any actor ever conveyed the sheer joy of acting with more brio?
Courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios
The best family films are those that entertain both children and adults. “The Sheep Detectives” can be enjoyed simply as a funny fable with a solvable mystery at its center. The well-placed clues are hidden in plain view. This is not always the case with mystery movies (even in some of the “Knives Out” entries).
But there is also underlying tenderness and melancholy that elevate the film beyond the conventional family entertainment genre. The sheep aren’t a herd of interchangeable creatures. They each have names, given to them by George, and distinct personalities. And not all is sweetness and light. A little lamb, for example, is shunned as a “winter lamb” because he was born out of the usual spring season.
The sheep also indulge in a ritual forgetting, a kind of mass hypnosis, of all that is unpleasant. Only the philosophic Mopple (Chris O’Dowd) remembers everything. At the end, the sheep look up at the fleecy clouds and imagine them to be the departed souls of those they treasured. They come to understand, as Sebastian says, that it is our memories that keep our loved ones alive.
Peter Rainer is the Monitor’s film critic. Rated PG for thematic material, some violent content, and brief language.
