Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on Fire!
When I first saw the poster for The Sheep Detectives, I figured it was an obvious miss. I liked Babe well enough, but talking animal movies aren’t really something I seek out, and there’s always a sense of CGI talking animals hitting that uncanny valley area that I find disturbing. And then the reviews started coming in and they were almost entirely positive. So when it showed up on streaming, I figured it was time to take a more serious look at it.
There are certainly some initial similarities to Babe, of course. It takes place on a farm, there are plenty of sheep, and all of the animals talk. But, The Sheep Detectives is a murder mystery, and it’s the sheep who need to try to figure out who killed their shepherd, because the local police are not specifically inept, but completely inexperienced in dealing with any serious crime like murder.
We’re going to start by being introduced to our cast of characters, and the cast here is deep to the point where mentioning everyone would take up several paragraphs and hundreds of words. Our shepherd, George (Hugh Jackman) lives in a trailer on his land and spends his day taking care of his flock of animals. George is convinced that sheep are smarter than most people think and also believes that they all deserve a name. And so he has named all of his. He also spends his evenings reading to his flock, typically reading murder mystery stories.
What we learn from this is that Lily (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is the smart sheep who always solves the mysteries before the last chapter. We also learn that sheep can force themselves to forget things and will make themselves forget unpleasant events. Mopple (Chris O’Dowd) doesn’t have this ability and remembers everything. Much of the herd is controlled by Sir Ritchfield (Patrick Stewart). Cloud (Regina Hall) is the most vain of the sheep, while Reggie and Ronnie (Brett Goldstein) are aggressive twins who like to ram into things. We also meet Sebastian (Bryan Cranston), who is aloof. He’s a part of the flock, but spends most of his time alone.
We learn that George has been writing letters to his long-lost daughter Rebecca (Molly Gordon), who has shown up in England to meet her father, but arrives in the small town the day after he is found dead in his field. Initially, it is assumed he had a heart attack, but a little investigation demonstrates that it was almost certainly a murder. Rebecca is certainly the main suspect, but there are some others in town who had grudges against George. And charged with solving the crime is the local cop, Tim Derry (Nicholas Braun). Watching over all of this is reporter Elliot Matthews (Nicholas Galitzine) and George’s lawyer, Lydia Harbottle (Emma Thompson).
A surprising amount of the film is spent getting us to understand the sheep themselves. We learn that their beliefs include the idea that sheep don’t die, but turn into clouds. This, of course, comes from the fact that sheep willfully forget difficult and painful things, like the deaths of loved ones. In fact, Lily has to force the other sheep to not immediately forget George when they discover him dead. We also learn that sheep hate winter lambs, although we never learn why.
Another large part of the film is understanding how the sheep are trying to solve the crime, based only on their knowledge of murder mystery novels and not understanding why the real-world murder of George doesn’t act like one of their stories.
The rest of the film is the humans doing their best to solve the crime as well, often getting inexplicable hints from the sheep themselves. Everyone seems to have a motive and everyone seems to have had something against George—the local innkeeper (Hong Chau) evidently hated him for some reason, the local butcher (Conleth Hill) is angry that George only keeps his sheep for wool, fellow shepherd (Tosin Cole) is upset that he has to rent fields from George, and the local priest (Kobna Holdbrook-Smith) has some unknown past history with him as well.
The main issues I have with The Sheep Detectives is that CGI talking animals still look weird. I wish they didn’t, but they do, and there are times when this dips deep into the uncanny valley. This is especially true of one of the young lambs voiced by Bella Ramsey. It’s also true that the mystery itself isn’t that deep, but it’s fine. After all, it’s the sheep who are trying to solve it.
But, honestly, this is a small quibble. The Sheep Detectives is fun and entertaining, has moments of true sweetness and a couple of moments of genuine emotion and sadness. Based on reviews, I figured I would like this. I didn’t expect I would end up liking it as much as I did.
Why to watch The Sheep Detectives: It’s delightful.
Why not to watch: CGI talking animals still look weird.
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