People who know me well know that I’m not joking when I tell them that Babe should have won the 1996 Oscar for Best Picture over Braveheart. Sometimes a well-made animal tale can tell us more about empathy and (yes) humanity than the most well-meaning human-centered film.
Is The Sheep Detectives as good as Babe? Well, it’s hard to match that magical film, but this woolly mystery is still a delightfully funny surprise.
We meet the shepherd George (Hugh Jackman), a ruggedly handsome man who lives in a trailer on the land where he tends his flock. Each night, his sheep gather ’round to listen as he reads them stories… mysteries and whodunits, actually. The critters huddle together like woolly loaves, blinking as they listen. As soon as George closes the book and heads to bed, the sheep immediately start talking, discussing the plot and trying to solve the latest literary murder. Count me charmed!
But don’t get too cozy. The next morning, George is found sprawled on the ground outside his trailer, dead. The sheep are baffled. They don’t understand death outside of books. Thanks to their ability to forget unpleasant things, they believe that fellow sheep don’t die, but instead rise and turn into puffy clouds in the sky (a sweet, naive premise that made me think of the Carousel death/renewal ritual in Logan’s Run). But when it becomes clear that dear George is truly dead—and most likely murdered—it’s up to the flock to solve the mystery.
The filmmakers conveniently make the characters in the flock visually distinct. Easy to tell apart (brown, gray, white, shaggy, and so on), the sheep also have distinct personalities thanks to the top-notch voice cast. Among them are the boisterous, head-butting twin rams (voiced by Brett Goldstein), the fluffy, self-absorbed diva Cloud (Regina Hall), the gruff elder Sir Ritchfield (Patrick Stewart), and Wool Eyes (Rhys Darby), who indeed has wool hanging over his eyes.
But it’s the earnest and clever ewe Lily (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) who was George’s favorite. With the help of Mopple (Chris O’Dowd)—the only sheep blessed (or cursed) with true knowledge of death—and Sebastian (Bryan Cranston), the flock’s outcast black sheep, Lily is determined to solve the mystery.
Now, I know I love talking-animal movies more than the average person, but The Sheep Detectives is genuinely entertaining. The sheep are the bona fide stars of the show. There’s, of course, an Agatha Christie–style gaggle of human suspects, played by the likes of Hong Chau, Conleth Hill, Molly Gordon, Tosin Cole, Nicholas Galitzine, and more (with a tip of the hat to the always-welcome Emma Thompson as the estate lawyer). But they’re very much supporting players.
The most dorkily charming human, though, is the town’s hapless lone policeman Tim Derry (Nicholas Braun)—who’s not very bright, but possibly capable of shining. There’s something wonderful about a man so guileless that he sees sheep staring at him and wonders, “What are they trying to tell me?”
The Sheep Detectives is based on the novel Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann, which isn’t a children’s book and is apparently quite a bit darker than this adaptation. So fair warning to anyone thinking this is a film for very young kids: there’s some death-related material that may imprint some Bambi-level distress.
But anyone older than that—including adults without kids who love a good woolly yarn—will likely enjoy this crowd-pleasing mystery. You’ll certainly laugh, and you may even tear up. Most of all, you’ll fall for this flock, and may just find yourself wanting to scoop up an adorable Winter Lamb, just like kind-hearted George once did.
