Just when you thought the whodunit sub-genre of mysteries was going to begin and end with Rian Johnson’s Knives Out movies, we get director Kyle Balda’s The Sheep Detectives. Based on the 2005 German novel Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story by Leonie Swann (adapted by Craig Mazin), the film is a sincerely silly and wildly entertaining exercise is committing to the bit until the audience simply has no choice but to surrender to fun of it all.
Shepherd George Hardy (Hugh Jackman) lives alone in his trailer outside of the fictional town of Denbrook, in the English countryside. His meadow is filled with his beloved sheep, whom he reads to every night from his collection of mystery books. He doesn’t think the sheep understand him, but he enjoys the exercise nevertheless. But when he tells them goodnight, they immediately begin talking to each other and speculating on who the killer in the latest novel might be. The smartest of the bunch is Lily (voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus), a Shetland sheep who becomes the leader of the flock, simply because she’s really good at solving these fictional murder mysteries.
George is mostly disliked by—and in return, dislikes right back—most of the people in the town, some of whom want his land, others who want his sheep, and others who just hate him. As fate would have it, one morning, the sheep wake up to find George dead outside his trailer, and while the local, slightly dim-witted constable (Nicholas Braun) is on the case, the sheep decide to solve the mystery of George’s possible murder on their own. There is also a reporter from the city (Nicholas Galitzine, from the upcoming Masters of the Universe movie) in town to cover a local festival, and he too suspects foul play (and smells his first big story), so he begins his own investigation.
The film has no shortage of those with possible motives (or terrific actors from both the UK and the US), especially when George’s lawyer (Emma Thompson) shows up with his will, which is worth millions. Molly Gordon plays George’s long-lost daughter; Tosin Cole plays fellow shepherd Caleb, who has been coveting George’s land for years; Conleth Hill is a local butcher, who has been coveting his sheep; and then there's Hong Chau’s Beth, the local innkeeper who may have had relations with George in another life. Among those contributing sheep voices are Bryan Cranston, Chris O’Dowd, Regina Hall, Patrick Stewart, Bella Ramsey, Brett Goldstein, and Rhys Darby, all of whom inject real personality into their characters and find ways of contributing to the investigation, if only to call Braun’s attention to certain, obvious facts.
The Sheep Detectives has an abundance of charm, as well as some genuinely touching moments in which the filmmakers attempt to show things from the sheep’s perspective. For example, none of them have ever encountered a paved road before, so when some of them decide to leave their meadow and go into town, the road terrifies them. They also believe that when a sheep dies, they simply become a cloud, but when some begin to realize that death is something less idililc, panic begins to set in. The film is endearing, surprisingly funny, not necessarily aimed just at younger audiences, and clever about the way it unravels the mystery of it all. And in a rare feat, the voice acting might actually outshine most of the human acting, with perhaps the exception of Braun, who takes clumsy and distracted to new heights. Bring the kids, bring the grandparents, and above all, bring yourself to this one.
The film is now playing in theaters.
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