That’ll Do Too
Fine! Yes! Hugh Jackman + a bunch of animated talking sheep = delightful.
The Sheep Detectives
Director: Kyle Balda • Writer: Craig Mazin, based on the book by Leonie Swann
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Nicholas Braun, Emma Thompson, Nicholas Galitzine, Hong Chau
UK / USA • 1hr 49mins
Opens Hong Kong May 14 • IIA
Grade: B+
The first (unfair) comparisons Kyla Balda’s semi-live action mystery comedy The Sheep Detectives is going to get will be to Chris Noonan’s love-it-or-hate-it pig and farmer comedy Babe, about an adorable talking piglet in grips of an identity crisis. And I say love it or hate it because that’s the way animal movies tend to roll. They’re not all created equal either, because Babe is an all-timer, not so much. So is The Sheep Detectives, which is exactly what it looks like it’s going to be if the trailers are any indication. Based on Three Bags Full by German (!) writer Leonie Swann and adapted with too big a dollop of Americanism (probably thanks to producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller) for Brits and too many Britishisms for Yanks by Craig Mazin (Chernobyl, The Last of Us… The Hangover Part III?), the VFX and animation do enough work to distract from both for both. Mazin also strips away some of the source material’s more unsavoury, less family-friendly elements – like George’s infidelity, a criminal side hustle, church secrets and sudden paralysis. Yikes.
In reality The Sheep Detectives has big Paddington energy too, despite the fact the people don’t hear the sheep the way they do the Peruvian bear. Perhaps it’s the innate sweetness of the animal characters and the gut-wrenching epiphanies they’re forced into and the film’s gentle handling of material that may be tricky for younger audiences. Because for a family film, The Sheep Detectives deals an awful lot with bigotry, exploitation, grief and death. Gently.
Sheep will always be amusing
Animator Balda, who as director is responsible for the crimes of Minions, Despicable Me 3 and Minions: The Rise of Gru, earned a lot of leeway with the US$3 billion he racked up on those films, and while not exactly taxing he does a respectable job of marrying animation and real actors in mostly seamless storytelling. The film starts with shearing-only shepherd George Hardy (Hugh Jackman, no Bryan Brown in The Thorn Birds but he’ll do) writing a letter to what turns out to be his daughter Rebecca (Molly Gordon, The Bear), regaling her with tales of how wonderful sheep are, why he’s taken a hot mintue to name every single one of them, and why he loves his life on the meadow. It seems George and Rebecca have been apart for some time, so he invites her for a visit and hopes she’ll say yes. Meantime, as George describes the hamlet of Denbrook, he tells us about how he gets on, or doesn’t, with the innkeeper Beth (Hong Chau), another shepherd, Caleb (Tosin Cole), the Reverend Hillcoate (Kobna Holdbrook-Smith) and the butcher, Ham (Conleth “Lord Varys” Hill). He also mentions that he reads detective stories to his flock every night – who we find out are way smarter and more organised than we think they are. Trigger warning for cat owners. Then, George turns up dead and things kick off when George’s lawyer Lydia Harbottle (Emma Thompson in peak dismissive form) turns up to read the will. The local constable Tim (Cousin Greg himself, Succession’s Nicholas Braun) declares the death a murder, and along with a reporter looking for a career-making scoop, Elliot (Nicholas Galitzine, horny mini-series Mary & George) and George’s flock, they set out to solve the mystery.
Editorial bias alert: I personally find sheep hilarious and adorable and am totally Team George on that front, so The Sheep Detectives is an easy sell over here. And yes it’s schmaltzy and silly, the outsider winter lamb is aggressively cute and if there’s a wee stuffed version of him at the toy store I am 100% buying one. The jokes are goofy though not entirely without genuine wit (a chicken crossing the road is priceless), the cast knows exactly the film they’re making, and each actor knows just how much gravitas to inject into the dialogue and when. And there are moments of true emotional impact that transcend easy manipulation. It’s via the sheep but the film does touch on heady concepts like the inevitability of death and the lingering pain of being made to feel othered. The sheep just make these ideas easy for kids to understand.
Of course, their characters are only as vivid as the voices who play them. Billionaire agricuture/energy scion Julia Louis-Dreyfus is suitably motherly, bossy and in denial as main detective Lily, Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad) is his usual world weary as the wounded Sebastian, and Chris O’Dowd is a natural at looking like he knows something tragic he doesn’t want to break to you. Here he sounds it as Mopple, the only one of the flock that remembers the past. Rounding out the crew are Regina Hall (One Battle After Another), Patrick Stewart (Captain Picard), Bella Ramsey (Lady Mormont), Rhys Darby (Our Flag Means Death) and Brett Goldstein (Ted Lasso) to provide comic or sorrowful beats as required. It’s all very predictable but it’s also very delightful in its mix of good ol’ English mystery, gag comedy and even a touch of horror. Love it (and if you love it you may get something caught in your eye in the closing frames, just sayin’) or hate it I dare you to order lamb ever again.