I beg you…please watch The Sheep Detectives trailer below. Admit it, you’re rolling your eyes right? There’s no way this is gonna be even a solid movie right, let alone maybe resurrect the family movie too? Well, I’ve got a surprise for you. A glorious, delightful surprise.
In fields near Denbrook England, shepherd George Hardy (Hugh Jackman) cares for his lovely flock of sheep in the only way he knows how. He reads them murder mystery books, where his loyal sheep like Lily (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), Mopple (Chris O’Dowd) and Sebastian (Bryan Cranston) listen intently, and discuss amongst themselves who they think the killer was. This is all fun and games…until poor George doesn’t wake up one day, where eventually the police chief Tim Derry (Nicholas Braun) determines that this isn’t just a heart attack: there’s a crime to solve. Tim’s panicked and over his head…unaware he’s got a HERD of help eager and ready to get justice for their fallen human leader.
I can’t remember the last time I saw just a bonafide family movie that wasn’t animated. Yes there is a murder, but it’s that chaste British kind: no blood, nothing scary, just sad. Other than that, this is gonna slay on family Friday movie time. The human stuff carries that sardonic British wit that never ceases to delight. Starting with Nicholas Braun, the big winner here: he walks the near impossible line of being completely idiotic, but also empathetic and willing to learn. The movie needs him to be stupid enough that the sheep are always 3 steps ahead of him. Then, the animals plant clues to lead him in the right direction, usually creepily staring directly at him while doing so, leading to his evolving but always funny reactions that continuously cause chuckles. That not working? Well, Emma Thompson just shows up for 3 scenes, verbally kills everyone, in 7 or less minutes, then leaves again, with us always wanting more, as well as just a cavalcade of other willing supporting human thespians. But if the humans aren’t doing it, enter our herd of sheep. We get the broad sheep dialogue about their sheer panic of crossing streets, or Brett Goldstein’s ram twin brothers constantly talking about ramming anything and everything. Intersperse with that great visual gags of blinded sheep running into things, or transfixed and locked into staring at a bracelet. And grounding everything is the whimsical concept of a murder mystery and the whodunit part of the tale, an unfailing joy as a movie concept. The sheer amount of entertainment being thrown at me made me realize about an hour in I was just smiling, ear to ear, waiting for the next wonderful moment to sweep me up.
That in an of itself is almost a mini miracle in this day and age. But, inexplicably, The Sheep Detectives…THE SHEEP DETECTIVES…isn’t content to just rest on silly whimsy. Underneath all the fun, writer Craig Mazin is quietly building out what life is like living as a herd of sheep. Standard stuff like, how they learn things, how they forget things, what happens when one passes away, how winter sheep are treated, etc. At first, these seem like interesting, if pointless, one off topics to help immerse the audience in the movie’s story. But around the halfway point, this sheep worldview starts to get challenged, in shockingly poignant ways that I genuinely didn’t see coming. What happens are the stuff of great family filmmaking: it helps provide a bridge to talk to your kids about the uneasy parts of life, while also not destroying all the kids who see it. So, by the end, The Sheep Detectives really feels like everyone went on a journey together. Culminating in a shot at the end that I knew was coming, and didn’t matter; I just instinctively started to tear up, because it is the perfect reward for a great time at the movies.
Seriously, watch that trailer again. None of what I wrote you believe right? That’s good. Trust me, turn on The Sheep Detectives, and go in with an open mind, and an open heart. To steal from the movie this one is actively cribbing from…that’ll do sheep, that’ll do.