‘The Sheep Detectives’ – Review Thread

George Hardy is a shepherd who loves to read murder mysteries to his sheep, never suspecting that they can understand him. When George is found dead under mysterious circumstances, the sheep decide to solve the crime themselves, even if it means leaving their meadow for the first time and facing the fact that the human world isn't as simple as it appears in books.

Director: Kyle Balda

Screenplay: Craig Mazin

Cast: Hugh Jackman, Bryan Cranston, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Regina Hall, Nicholas Galitzine, Emma Thompson, Nicholas Braun, Brett Goldstein, Molly Gordon, Hong Chau

Rotten Tomatoes: 92%

Metacritic: 72 / 100

Some Reviews:

IGN – Jim Vejvoda – 8 / 10

The Sheep Detectives is a very sweet, and often quite moving, family comedy about grief and death. I know that sounds weird, but director Kyle Balda and screenwriter Craig Mazin are mostly successful at threading that needle, with the broad humor of some of the human characters being the film’s weakest aspect. The sheep characters Lily and Sebastian have compelling arcs that highlight the movie’s themes of acceptance and growth. As dark as the story can sometimes get, there’s still enough warmth and wit to make The Sheep Detectives appropriate for younger audiences.

Collider – Tania Hussain – 8 / 10

As one of the year’s most delightful surprises, The Sheep Detectives is a charming, smart, and sincerely heartfelt whodunit that proves even the smallest voices can carry the biggest stories. But best of all, it’s also the kind of film you don’t expect to love this much and one you won’t forget anytime soon!

The AU Review – Peter Gray – 3.5 / 5

The Sheep Detectives fully wins you over. It’s clever without being smug, heartfelt without being cloying, and consistently more thoughtful than it needs to be. A film that, frankly, is better than it has any right to be. It may take a beat to find its footing, but once it does, it’s a charming, quietly profound little whodunit that sticks with you – for its laughs, yes, but also for its surprisingly tender view of the world.

DEADLINE – Pete Hammond

With glorious small town production design by Suzie Davies, and superb visual effects, animation, and puppetry creating the sheep, this fine family film looks every bit as colorful and idyllic as Babe, its distant cousin. Narrated and starring Jackman, who in pure Hitchcock top-billed star fashion is killed off in the first act ala Janet Leigh in Psycho, but the role doesn’t completely end there, and the entire movie is about him. All the other live action stars have their moments, including perfectly cast Thompson and bumbling Braun.The starry voice cast delivers on all fronts, especially with lines provided by Mazin’s witty and wise script. You’ve no doubt heard the phrase: “fun for the whole family”? This one really is.

Variety – Guy Lodge

There’s wisdom amid the silliness, as the story gently makes a case for the necessity of grief, mindfulness and mortal awareness, even in a life otherwise unburdened by adult human responsibility. That’s more than you might expect from a film called “The Sheep Detectives,” inasmuch as you’d know what to expect at all from a film called “The Sheep Detectives” — a rare family entertainment happy not to follow the herd.

The Independent – Clarisse Loughrey – 3 / 5

It’s a bit much, to be frank. But at the time, the all-hands-aboard desire to take so absurd a premise and insist it be about something offers its Midsomer Murders-lite world a sense of weight and substance. The melodrama helps land the comedy.

The Guardian – Peter Bradshaw – 3 / 5

The great feelgood trick pulled off by this film is that the murder, involving a character we’ve been encouraged to like and invest in emotionally – much more so than in traditional detective stories – doesn’t get swamped with sadness and shock. The film scoots smartly past the death and brings us briskly on to the entertaining business of sheep-oriented crime detection. It’s all very silly, although, as with Babe, I have to confess to agnosticism about digital talking animals, even if the technology here is next-level. It’s an entertaining tale of ovine law enforcement.

AV Club – Tim Grierson – 'B'

It’s Louis-Dreyfus who steals The Sheep Detectives. Since the end of Veep, the decorated comedic actor has continued to challenge herself, reuniting with Enough Said filmmaker Nicole Holofcener for the wry character study You Hurt My Feelings and starring in the prickly grief drama Tuesday. Celebrities doing voice work tend to emphasize the most noticeable aspects of their speaking style, but Louis-Dreyfus actually disappears as Lily, who has none of the brazenness of Elaine Benes or Selina Meyer. Instead, this savvy sheep is much more vulnerable and thoughtful, determined to find George’s killer but worried that spotting the murderer in a novel is a lot easier than in real life. The Sheep Detectives is meant to be a lightweight family flick, but Louis-Dreyfus gives it an emotional core that’s quite affecting, especially in the movie’s closing stretches.

The Wrap – William Bibbiani

“The Sheep Detectives” is a wonderful film and it’s not a shallow film, which is bound to take a lot of people by surprise. Screenwriter Craig Mazin (“The Last of Us”) knows how to balance the narrative’s smart storyline and tricky tonal shifts, Kyle Balda knows how to bring that tale to life, and the rest of the cast and crew are all on the same page. It’s a remarkable family flick and I suspect it will leave a lasting impression. Yes, we never had enough sheep detective stories before, but I think we can finally — finally — put the past(ure) behind us.