The Sheep Detectives is the cutest, sweetest movie ever made about accepting death and confronting grief and trauma that’s probably ever been made. Imagine if Babe had to solve the murder of Farmer Hoggett and you’ll get a sense of what this comedy-mystery family film is going for.
Shepherd George Hardy (Hugh Jackman) lives on a farm outside a small English village where, every day before nightfall, he reads detective stories to his beloved flock. Although gruff with the townsfolk, George is kind and loving towards his sheep, whom he only raises for their wool. (He’s a vegetarian and is against the slaughter of animals.)
His flock (voiced by Regina Hall, Patrick Stewart, Bella Ramsey, Brett Goldstein, and Rhys Darby) are an assortment of different breeds, including a Shetland, a Castlemilk Moorit, two Norfolk Horns, a Merino and so on. George’s favorite sheep, Lily (voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus), is also the smartest of the flock, who are awed by her ability to figure out the killer in George’s whodunits before he even finishes reading them the story.
(It’s important to note here that the sheep can’t speak to humans, but they can speak to each other and can understand the meaning of what humans say. Also, they have a range of accents, from American to Irish to English, that’s never explained but, really, who cares?)
One morning, they wake up to find George dead outside of his trailer. With the exception of two sheep – Moppie (voiced by Chris O’Dowd) and gruff loner with a past Sebastian (voiced by Bryan Cranston) – don’t know what death even is. They think all sheep just turn into clouds one day and that death only exists in the stories George reads to them. Utilizing their knowledge of how to solve murders from the stories George read them, Lily and her fellow sheep set out to help bring their shepherd’s killer to justice.
The Last of Us’s Craig Mazin screenplay adaptation of Leonie Swann’s 2005 novel Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story is full of truly poignant, heartstring-pulling and profound moments for its sheep characters, particularly Lily and Sebastian. The story also explores the blinders that groups (even flocks of sheep) can willingly adopt, whether it’s a prejudice towards outsiders or superstitions that are passed down. This might all sound very heavy, but there is a lot of heart and warmth (and cute animal antics) here to help take the edge off.
Minions and Despicable Me 3’s Kyle Balda makes his live-action directing debut here. His skill at being able to tell an amusing but still heartfelt story for kids and families is well displayed in all the sheep scenes, but the broad humor inherent in animated kids movies doesn’t translate as seamlessly into live-action when it comes to many of the human characters. Some of those jokes come off as strained and clunky in their delivery.
Nicholas Braun plays Tim Derry, the town’s dim-witted (and only) cop, who finds assistance in his first murder investigation from Nicholas Galitzine’s reporter George, who came to town to cover a cultural festival but found a much bigger story instead. Braun ends up revealing more nuances to Tim as he learns how to become a better cop thanks to Lily, Moppie and Sebastian’s covert interventions, but Galitzine struggles to land some of his character’s goofier moments.
Scene stealer Emma Thompson fares much better in a small role as a hotshot lawyer who rolls into town with some surprising news about George’s will, and is accompanied by a young American woman named Rebecca (The Bear’s Molly Gordon) who harbors secrets of her own.
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