I wanted to watch something nice this weekend, so I decided to stream The Sheep Detectives. Give me a break, what was I going to do? Go and see Supergirl?
The Sheep Detectives had a great cast: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Regina Hall, Chris O’Dowd, Rhys Darby, Bryan Cranston, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Emma Thompson. Bella Ramsey was also in it, but as a voice only, thank goodness.
The Story
I’m not a big one for murder mysteries, but I haven’t seen one with sheep solving the crime:
Every night a shepherd reads aloud a murder mystery, pretending his sheep can understand. When he is found dead, the sheep realize at once that it was a murder and think they know everything about how to go about solving it.
We open on a little field somewhere in England, I think, as everyone tries an English accent. George (Jackman) lives in a trailer and tends to his sheep. It’s a simple life, and to be honest, it sounds amazing.
He looks after all his sheep, each of them having names and little personalities. However, they understand him, but he cannot understand them; that would be stupid.
George keeps heading into town, and the sheep (who we can all understand) are worried something is wrong. One morning, the sheep find that George is dead in the field. It seems there is foul play, which the local police idiot fails to recognise.
The sheep, on the other hand, know a good mystery novel, so they decide to solve the crime.
As I said, I’m not a huge fan of these types of movies, but you know what, the story is well done and well planned out.
The Cast
There is a mix of live-action characters and talking sheep. Everyone is good, really good to be honest. You like George, he’s just a nice guy, a bit of an old grump, but nice. Like me, apart from the fact that he’s devastatingly good-looking, which is unlike me.
The human side has a good mix of people, from the idiot policeman to Thompson, who plays George’s lawyer.
The cast of the sheep is very funny, even Ramsey, but then again, I wasn’t sure which sheep she was. The comedy is funny, there’s one little lamb that suspects everyone, and Stewart always backs her up, shouting, “Murderer!”
Technically
I have said it before, and I will carry on saying it, but sometimes I hate how I can overanalyse things. The story of The Sheep Detective is clever and well plotted. However, it’s the technical side of things that lets it down.
The ADR is really off-putting. If I were to guess, I would say they didn’t even have a sound guy on the set. Almost all of the voices of humans are replaced, and noticeably so.
The other thing was the direction. Kyle Balda was the director, who is known for movies like The Lorax, Minions, and Despicable Me 3. I think the transition from animated movies to live action was quite a leap.
There are badly framed shots, and some dodgy editing. It’s annoying, as usually I can appreciate a good movie, even with dodgy direction, but here, not so much.
Overall
I can’t imagine many of you Outposters are going to openly watch this, but I also know that secretly, you still watch movies like The Sheep Detective. Look, the trailer made it look sweet, so why not?
I would say it’s a good one for the kids, but at 2 hours, I found myself struggling towards the end. I have no idea why they didn’t keep this to 90 minutes.
The jokes are good, the story is solid, but apart from some of the technical aspects, it’s a good movie. If it were on TV again, I might sit through it. What else can I say? It’s about sheep acting like Miss Marple. It’s fun.
I’m giving The Sheep Detectives 2 out of 5. It’s middle of the road. You can find it on streaming.
