The titular roaming flock of “The Sheep Detectives” is in on the joke. They know that when humans are looking for a term to call people who cannot think for themselves, they’ll call them “sheep.” But if every dog has its day, as Shakespeare once observed, so too do the ovine heroes of this family-friendly murder mystery.
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Hugh Jackman’s good shepherd, George, knows the flock of sheep he raises is the answer to happiness. Yet little does he know that they also possess a certain sense of cunning and wisdom. Reading detective novels to his animals nightly as a bedtime story cultivates their instinct for anticipation and observation. This habit basically turns Lily (voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus) into as much of a self-styled Sherlock Holmes as any human pencil-pusher mainlining true crime podcasts at their desk.
These skills come in handy when the sheep find their owner’s dead body and find themselves caught up in a brewing murder investigation that engulfs a small English village. These anthropomorphic sheep can decipher the rumblings of Nicholas Braun’s Officer Tim Derry as he tries to crack the case, although he can only hear their indistinct bleating. Screenwriter Craig Mazin (yes, the same one of “Chernobyl” and “The Last of Us” fame) places audiences in the position of the sheep, able to straddle both worlds of understanding.
“The Sheep Detectives” is at its most winning and wholesome when it stays close to the ground with the sheep. This amusing bunch ranges from rambunctious ramming twins (voiced by Brett Goldstein) to an elder sage (voiced by Chris O’Dowd) and even a mysterious loner (voiced by Bryan Cranston). Lily bands the gang together to piggyback off the human inquiries into George’s death, and it’s only they who can connect the dots in the name of justice. Time spent with this woolen crew offers a welcome throwback to family adventure movies of yesteryear, which cared more about conveying moral tales than pushing toy sales.
Mazin’s script, adapted from Leonie Swann’s German novel “Three Bags Full,” suffuses the journey with a witty and warm glow throughout. But the film picks up impressive steam in emotionality as it chugs along, evolving from more of a jokey DreamWorks Animation-style romp to something that can approximate Pixar’s sentimental devastation. There’s plenty of the familiar hits around maturation, belonging, and inclusion, to be sure.
What’s more unexpected, however, is how the film handles the sheep’s ability to forget events that unsettle them, especially death consciously. It might fly over the heads of younger viewers who only register the surface level of events, but “The Sheep Detectives” morphs into a powerful and relevant commentary on how communal memory forms and dissolves. Seriously, a movie about crime-solving animals has more to say about heady topics like bearing witness and the transmission of values than many a prestige indie drama.
There’s a challenge for “The Sheep Detectives,” however. In order to arrive at the point of revelation for the story’s truest meaning, it has to trudge through a lot of plot points. The sheep help nudge the proceedings along with their curiosity, but the real movers of the action are the human characters who hold the true legal authority of criminal investigation. Even grading on a generous curve that adjusts for this being geared toward children, these caricatures of humble country folks are ridiculous. It’s they, not the sheep, who feel like the real cartoons in the film.
Director Kyle Balda never quite manages to blend the two tonalities of the realms in which “The Sheep Detectives” operates. The live-action cast all vibrate on entirely different frequencies. Molly Gordon, who plays George’s daughter from out of town, pitches the performance no differently than if she were on the set of any other comedy. Nicholas Galitzine, on the other hand, goes all affectation and archness as a reporter who stumbles upon a great story. Somewhere in the middle is Braun, trying his hardest to sublimate all the Cousin Greg-isms from “Succession” into a similarly dopey striver … only this time with a soft, spotty English accent.
If anyone doubts the artistry of Paul King, helmer of the first two “Paddington” films, compare how the characters here veer so far into silliness that they lose touch with any sense of sincerity. The second act here especially drags because it plays out like a Kidz Bop version of a “Knives Out” film, watering down the complex mechanics of a detective tale for broad palatability. In fact, the tribute is so complete that Mazin also leaves characters played by pedigreed actors such as Emma Thompson and Hong Chau hanging out to dry with no real relevance to the main storyline.
“The Sheep Detective” manages to end on such an overwhelmingly sweet note that it might be tempting to adopt the position of the sheep by memory-holing some of these rough patches in the film. There’s plenty to like, and this starter kit for detective fiction ought to serve as more of a net positive for kids than another soulless reboot of existing IP. But it’s a shame to settle for merely good when something great was very clearly a plausible outcome. [B-]
“The Sheep Detectives” opens in theaters on Friday, May 8.
