There’s a moment, very early in The Sheep Detectives, when the MGM lion opens his mouth and, instead of a roar, out comes a soft, sheepish “baa.” It’s a tiny gag, but it’s also a thesis statement: this is a movie that knows exactly what it is, and it’s going to have a wonderful time being it.
What it is, improbably, is a tender Agatha Christie pastiche set in the English countryside, in which a flock of sheep solves the murder of their beloved shepherd. If that sentence makes you raise an eyebrow, congratulations, you’ve had the same reaction as everyone who’s ever heard the premise. And like everyone who’s actually sat down to watch it, you’ll come out the other side a convert.
George (Hugh Jackman, doing an unexpectedly plummy English accent that he wears like a borrowed cardigan) is a shepherd who lives alone in a trailer on a postcard-perfect meadow. He shears his sheep, doses them with a bright blue medicine for Orf disease, and reads them murder mysteries by lamplight. He thinks they’re listening politely. He doesn’t realize they’re taking notes.
When George turns up dead one morning, his flock decides it’s time to put that education to use. Lily (Julia Louis-Dreyfus, sparkling) is the russet ewe who’s always been quickest to name the killer in George’s bedtime stories. Sebastian (Bryan Cranston) is the gruff loner who watches the world from a high crag and trusts almost no one. They’re joined by a glorious supporting cast of bleating thespians: Patrick Stewart’s Sir Ritchfield holds court in his Royal Shakespeare Company purr, Rhys Darby’s Wool-Eyes supplies a fluster of Kiwi anxiety, Chris O’Dowd’s Mopple remembers everything the others have decided to forget, and Brett Goldstein voices a pair of headbutting twin rams because of course he does.
The conceit that makes the movie sing isn’t that the sheep speak English. It’s that they’ve collectively agreed not to remember anything sad. In their world, sheep don’t die; they turn into clouds, and a quick glance at the sky is all the proof they need. That charming bit of self-deception is what George’s death finally cracks open, and it’s what gives the film its surprising emotional ballast. Underneath all the wool and whodunit, this is a movie about deciding to feel hard things on purpose.
The human suspects are a row of cozy-mystery archetypes ripe for sorting: the bumbling village constable (Nicholas Braun, all elbows and good intentions), the disapproving butcher (Conleth Hill), the rival shepherd (Tosin Cole) with too many sweaters and not enough alibis, the long-lost American daughter (Molly Gordon), and the imperious lawyer reading the will (Emma Thompson, who needs about four seconds to establish her character and only uses three of them). Director Kyle Balda, making the leap from Minions to live action, lets the humans buzz about like a Britcom while reserving the storybook hush for the sheep, and the tonal handoff is seamless.
Craig Mazin’s screenplay, adapted from Leonie Swann’s novel Three Bags Full, plays fair. Every clue is out there on the meadow if you’re paying attention, and the solution lands with the satisfying click of a properly built mystery. The visual effects deserve their own paragraph of praise, mostly because you won’t notice them. The sheep have weight. They have wool that catches the light. They lean against fence posts like real animals do, and when one of them rams a car, you feel it in your sternum.
There’s a moment late in the film when a sheep we’ve come to love makes a sacrifice that hits much harder than it has any right to in a movie about talking livestock. I won’t say more. I’ll just note that I wasn’t the only adult in my row reaching surreptitiously for a tissue.
The Sheep Detectives is the kind of movie they supposedly don’t make anymore: a real PG film, the sort your whole family can watch together, where the kids get the jokes and the adults get the ache. It’s funny without being smug, sweet without being saccharine, and clever without showing off. It’s also, against every odd, a genuine mystery you’ll actually want to solve. Trust the sheep. They figured it out.
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