The Sheep Detectives film review: Sleuthing fun
A sunny film with life lessons aplenty, this chaotic comedy is a hoot
From the creative minds that brought you, erm, Minions and Chernobyl comes a fittingly far-fetched proposition. We’ve seen Wagatha Christie and now it’s time for Baa-gatha Christie, as a flock of sheep get in on the investigation act in a ewe-nique family film. Animation specialist Kyle Balda is at the helm of live-action shenanigans this time round, with The Last Of Us co-creator Craig Mazin adapting Leonie Swann’s novel Three Bags Full.
Hugh Jackman plays genial shepherd George, who lives alongside his beloved flock in a trailer and reads murder mysteries to them every night before bed. When George is found dead, with poisoning suspected, the investigating officer (Nicholas Braun aka Succession’s Cousin Greg) is clearly not up to the job, and so the sheep step in to nudge him in the right direction. Molly Gordon, Nicholas Galitzine, Conleth Hill and Hong Chau are amongst the humans under scrutiny, with Bryan Cranston, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Patrick Stewart lending their voices to the sheep.
After a shaky start, in which the film struggles to coherently establish its tone and setting (although clearly unfolding in England, details including George’s American style trailer, the mention of dollars, and a generic postal service place it distractingly elsewhere), things click into place following the crime. Murder should be a scandalously unsuitable subject for family fare, but Balda and co pull it off by flooding their film with sunshine, with lessons to be learned about death and family, and featuring bumbling, sometimes chaotic comedy, brilliantly delivered by a convincingly British Braun, while Emma Thompson is a hoot as a sharp-suited and scathing lawyer. Who dunnit isn’t a huge head scratcher, but The Sheep Detectives has fun with genre conventions, as it schools the kids in the ways of sleuthing.
The Sheep Detectives is in cinemas from Friday 8 May.