The trailers for The Sheep Detectives offer a few clues that might lead one to believe the movie is nothing more than a mediocre whodunit, with talking sheep inserted to boost its family appeal. The means, motive, and opportunity are all there.
But like any good murder mystery, digging a little deeper reveals that things are not exactly as they seem. Don’t let the wool be pulled over your eyes. The Sheep Detectives is the best family film of the year so far and one of the better films overall.
We are quickly introduced to George Hardy (Hugh Jackman) as he tends to his flock of sheep in a pasture just outside of the tiny city of Denbrooke (which appears to be a fictional British town despite the movie going to great lengths to avoid stating the name of the country).
George’s day revolves around his sheep: feeding them, shearing them, and giving them their medicine. Most importantly, he caps off each night by reading them stories—murder mysteries in particular. He thinks, of course, that they don’t understand, but as he retires for the night, our perspective shifts and we get to hear the sheep discussing the night’s story together.
The flock is led by a sheep named Lilly (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), who is considered “the smartest sheep in the world” by her flock. She always figures out the killer in the nighttime stories. Another important sheep in this tale is Mopple (Chris O’Dowd), particularly because he remembers everything. The other sheep are shown to have the ability to “choose to forget” things, a strange concept not related to any realities of sheep, but an important device for the story. The other most impactful sheep is Sebastian (Bryan Cranston), a big black goat who is shown to roam outside the pasture and rarely interacts with the flock.
The next morning, Lilly discovers George dead outside of his airstream, with a green stain on his hand. Mopple has to inform Lilly that death is something that is real, not just something from the nighttime stories. The flock tends toward their instincts and decides to forget George ever existed rather than grapple with their grief, but Sebastian barges in and stops them. They owe it to George to remember him, Sebastian says. When one of the young lambs suggests George was murdered, Lilly realizes there are things that don’t add up and commits the flock to solving the case.
Meanwhile, there is a whole cast of human characters to contend with, including multiple suspects, a bumbling cop, and a bottom-rung reporter looking for a story.
Nicholas Braun plays the daffy cop Tim Derry, who at first rules George’s death a heart attack without even investigating inside the airstream. But he is spurred on by the arrival of Elliot Matthews (Nicholas Galzatine), an obituaries reporter from the big city paper looking to make his mark covering a big story while stuck in the small town. George’s last will casts our suspects: butcher Ham Gilyard (Conleth Hill), a neighboring shepherd Caleb Merrow (Tosin Cole), the local pastor Reverend Hillcoate (Kobna Holdbrook-Smith), the local cultural director Beth Pennock (Hong Chau), and George’s daughter Rebecca (Molly Gordon), who arrives unexpectedly from America.
A true criticism of the film is that this whodunnit ends up being fairly thin, as a few clues feel too strong to be ignored. However, there are a few decent motivations for other suspects. Some suspects are barely set up as possible murderers at all, though.
The strength of the film is that while it follows the trappings of the whodunnit, it is also a bit of a meta-commentary or parody on the genre, and that’s only half of the story.
Where the film shines is its deeper aspect of the sheep of George’s flock grappling with death and grief, and the importance of remembering loved ones even when their loss hurts. There are also different stakes introduced for the sheep beyond solving George’s murder, in a scene that actually might be scary for younger kids.
The comedy is also strong, foregoing fart jokes for some clever sheep puns, and lots of misunderstandings due to the sheep’s limited experience (the funniest scene involves the main trio of sheep discussing who God is as they pass a church).
And I have left out the most adorable character of the cast: the winter lamb (George explains that lambs born in the winter are ostracized by the flock, although this is again something that is true only in the fictional world of the movie and not at all true in our reality).
The ostracizing of the winter lamb is compelling, particularly because these creatures are otherwise so kind and humble, and it pays off beyond just this character. The winter lamb is sometimes a key character going against the flock’s tendency of groupthink, and is also just extremely cute as a tiny newborn lamb. Seeing him ignored by the other sheep naturally makes one even more attached.
The film, of course, gets silly as the premise requires the sheep at times to help point Derry to clues as they attempt to find the real killer, and that humor won’t work for everyone. But it is balanced out by the movie’s willingness to approach death and darkness, and the payoffs hit in the end.
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