The Sheep Detectives is delightful and wholesome in the way family movies used to be before kids started getting too smart to be easily pleased, observes Deepa Gahlot.
Key Points
- The Sheep Detectives, adapted from Three Bags Full, is a charming and emotional film blending live-action and CGI sheep to solve a murder.
- The film features a stellar voice cast including Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Chris O’Dowd, Patrick Stewart and Bryan Cranston, with Hugh Jackman as the kind-hearted shepherd.
- The plot revolves around a flock of sheep, who, after their shepherd George’s murder, use their knowledge from his mystery readings to guide a bumbling cop.
- Despite being aimed at children, the film’s melancholic tone and wholesome storytelling are likely to resonate with adults as well.
The Sheep Detectives is a charming, funny, and also somewhat melancholic film meant mainly for kids, but would move adults too.
Adapted by Craig Mazin from the bestselling book, Three Bags Full, by Leonie Swann, and directed by Kyle Balda (Despicable Me), the film uses live action and digitally created sheep, with beautifully rendered expressions.
It is a bit of Babe and Paddington in look and The Thursday Murder Club in spirit, where a bunch of unlikely detectives — in this case, sheep — solve a crime.
A Unique Premise and Beloved Characters
Sheep are supposed to be stupid, but the kind-hearted shepherd George (Hugh Jackman) treats his flock with affection, giving them names and noting their quirks; they are of different sizes and colours, with their own recognisable traits.
Amusingly, there are also two head-butting rams, whose unprovoked violence comes in handy later. The frisky lambs and the older, wise sheep love George too. Like a bunch of eager children, his flock listens attentively as he reads aloud to them, mostly murder mysteries. The sheep bleat for humans, but speak English among themselves.
The Unlikely Investigation
Set in the picture postcard village of Denbrook, where everybody knows everybody, George is a loner, so it is unimaginable to the sole cop of the village, the bumbling young Tim (Nicolas Braun), that he should be murdered.
‘Heart attack,’ he declares, trying to close his first murder case, but a nosy journalist, Elliot (Nicholas Galitzine), passing through Denbrook, points out clues, and for the sake of a juicy story attaches himself to the investigation.
Like kids are told that dead people become stars in heaven, the sheep have no concept of death, they believe they become clouds.
Sheep Take the Lead
But the clever sheep Lily (voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus), and her main cohorts, Mopple (Chris O’Dowd), Sir Richfield (Patrick Stewart) and the cynical recluse Sebastian (Bryan Cranston), decide they can solve the crime, having heard enough stories.
They have to find ways to point Tim towards the clues they find, and they do manage inventive ways of nudging the baffled cop. The suspects are rival sheep farmer Caleb (Tosin Cole), Ham, a butcher (Conleth Hill), a priest (Kobna Holdbrook-Smith), and the sullen inn-keeper (Hong Chau).
George’s long lost daughter, Rebecca (Molly Gordon), who mysteriously appears a day before his death becomes a suspect too, after the lawyer (Emma Thompson) reads the will.
Themes of Grief and Acceptance
The sheep, already grieving George’s death, have to leave the safety of their meadow to venture out. They also discover that Caleb and Ham want to use the flock for meat, unlike George, who reared them for wool.
Through the character of Sebastian and a tiny lamb shunned for being a winter sheep — most sheep are born in spring — the film gently makes a case for accepting the outsider. The film may be a bit short on humour, having decided that the tone would be emotional and heart-tugging, but The Sheep Detectives is still delightful and wholesome in the way family movies used to be before kids started getting too smart to be easily pleased.
Hugh Jackman brings his star appeal to the role of the shepherd, his eyes twinkling with joy at their antics.
The voice cast is so wonderful that the scenes with the sheep are far more entertaining than the ones with humans.
The Sheep Detectives Review Rediff Rating:
