I first learned about The Sheep Detectives thanks to a YouTube ad. I enjoy sharing trailers of movies that look bizarre, for good or bad reasons, with my wife, and this ad seemed to fit the bill. I shared it with her; to my absolute surprise, she was enamored and immediately declared that we would be seeing this movie in theaters.
My wife really doesn’t like going to the theater. It usually gives her a big headache. I think the last movie we saw in theaters (also her choice), was Dear Evan Hansen, all the way back in 2021.
I wasn’t thrilled, but, I thought to myself, at least this movie had Hugh Jackman in it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Hugh Jackman movie that I didn’t like. In a world where the existence of genuine celebrity has nearly gone the way of the dodo, Jackman is an endling, and I hoped that would salvage The Sheep Detectives.
It turns out, my pessimism was entirely unwarranted. I had an excellent time, and for far more reason than just the Jackman.
Overview of The Sheep Detectives
What is It?
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.
The Sheep Detectives is a family-friendly whodunnit murder mystery that entertainingly teaches the basics of the genre, making it an excellent introductory movie, while also having a strong enough twist at the end to keep people familiar with the genre surprised and delighted. The movie primarily follows several sheep investigating the murder of their shepherd, but several human characters also play important roles.
Who Made It?
Kyle Balda directed The Sheep Detectives; his prior work included decades of work with Illumination and Pixar.
The Sheep Detectives‘ screen adaptation was written by Craig Mazin and Leonie Swann. Swann (pictured left) is, notably, the author of the novel that The Sheep Detectives is based on; it was first published in German as Glennkill, but the novel’s English translation goes by the name Three Bags Full.
The primary sheep characters are voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Seinfeld), Chris O’Dowd (The IT Crowd), and Bryan Cranston (Malcolm in the Middle).
The primary human characters are played by Hugh Jackman (The Greatest Show), Nicholaus Braun (Sky High), and Nicholas Galitzine (Purple Hearts).
Content Warnings
No objectionable content, although there is a scene at a sheep slaughter mill that, while not even remotely graphic, has an intense atmosphere that may frighten very young viewers.
The Review
Hugh Jackman, in The Sheep Detectives, is a shepherd who deeply, deeply loves his sheep, and sheep in general. He sees them as wonderful creatures, very curious, and much more intelligent than most people give them credit for. And, in the cases of Lily, Mopple, and Sebastian, he might have a point, but more on that later.
Considering that Jackman is obviously going to be the murder victim, the film spends more time with him than I would have expected before his inevitable demise, but every minute here is well-spent, making you love Jackman’s character, introducing you to the sheep and making you love them, and setting up the framework for the mystery, including potential motivations for the eventual suspects.
In short, The Sheep Detectives begins with a really solid foundation, and just keeps going from there, weaving together a surprisingly large number of elements into a cohesive, compelling whole.
Chief among those elements, there is, of course, the murder mystery. The sheep’s shepherd is dead, and they must find the killer! Information is doled out at the perfect pace, never so much as to overload, and never so little as to bore or leave the audience in the dark (in a frustrating manner, anyway). Information is also doled out with very effective timing, leading to several moments where my wife and I were excitedly whispering to each other in the theater about our new theories of who did it, or how.1 I felt that I had things mostly figured out pretty early on in the film, and yet I still managed to be surprised and delighted by how things ultimately resolved, and who the villain was revealed to be.
As a quick aside, I have not yet seen The Sheep Detectives a second time (though I intend to), but to my memory this film also performs the important task of never cheating. Meaning, I doubt on rewatch I’ll find any moment in the movie where I realize I was intentionally misled, or outright lied to, by the narrative.2 I think most audience members will find themselves surprised by something in this movie’s conclusion, and clever viewers who pay close attention will be given everything they need to puzzle out the mystery themselves.
On top of the murder mystery, there are several smaller storylines that flesh things out, most of which follow the sheep. Each primary sheep character (Lily, Mopple, and Sebastian) gets a meaningful arc, the sheep herd3 as a whole gets an interesting arc, and a few minor sheep get very small arcs (notably the winter lamb)—and this in addition to several human characters getting their own arcs of various sizes! I had several moments where I didn’t think the film would be able to successfully juggle all of the elements it introduced, let alone pull everything together at the end, but, to my delight, it did so—and very well, I might add.
The sheep’s animation is also very impressive. They look like realistic sheep, but stylized just enough that you can still read emotions on their faces, and to make some of their human-like actions not feel dissonant. There are moments where the animation feels like animation, but, for most of the film, the sheep feel like real creatures, which is quite impressive.
I want to note something else important, and sheep-related, here: the sheep in this film are effectively, and endearingly, portrayed as sheep. While smarter than real-world sheep, they still aren’t particularly bright (especially when compared to most humans—well, most humans of a reasonable IQ, at any rate), and, on top of that, most of them have next to no working knowledge about the world of humans outside of their pasture. They don’t even have any real concept of death (except Mopple). This unique perspective often serves to create moments of humor or characterization, or to add tension to a scene, and is very effectively utilized throughout the whole film.
The Sheep Detectives is very funny, and not in a now-obnoxious Marvel way, because this film remains very sincere. There’s something inherently funny about seeing sheep attempt (and mostly fail) human-y things, and seeing sheep in situations where they just don’t belong, among other jokes—it’s been a while since a movie has made me audibly laugh this much.
And, on this general topic, the movie allows its tender moments to exist, rather than undercutting them with inappropriate humor, which is greatly appreciated. Yes, the sheep in this movie, and their emotional journeys, are taken more seriously than what you’ll see in most movies nowadays, and it really works.
The Sheep Detectives is also a film with a very big heart. These are characters that you yearn to see succeed, and you feel their pain and their triumphs right along with them. My wife was brought to tears multiple times, and I must admit that I might have wiped away a tear or two myself. (Lily’s final conversation with her shepherd, and Sebastian’s ultimate fate—I couldn’t help myself.)
The movie is also very well-paced. At almost two hours, I don’t remember feeling that any given moment was wasted, and I didn’t feel tired or drained when the credits rolled, which isn’t always the case even with films of a standard movie length.
In short, I had an unexpectedly delightful time, and since watching The Sheep Detectives I’ve persuaded one of my bothers to watch the show—he loved it, and together we’re pushing down the rest of the dominos that make up my family, getting them to the theater.
And maybe we’ll persuade my dad to replace his cows with sheep.
Finally, speaking as a Christian—this film was not in any way religious,4 but it’s almost impossible to watch a story about sheep whose shepherd died in their service, and who prepared a way for them to be cared for after his death, and not make obvious connections, intended by the film or not, between Hugh Jackman’s character and the greatest of all shepherds, and that in multiple scenes. This is a minor spoiler, but the sheep who were set to be slaughtered by the unloving shepherd being purchased at the end, and being brought into the well-loved herd, was an incredibly powerful moment.
Wrapping Up
If I haven’t been clear enough by this point, I highly recommend giving The Sheep Detectives a go. It’s a funny, heartwarming film for anyone of any age, and I intend to have it on my shelf when it comes out on DVD.
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If you enjoyed my writing—well, I’m an independent author, so there’s a lot more of it you could try! Consider checking out one of my novels, the post-apocalyptic, science fiction story The Failed Technomancer, or the found-family fantasy story Inner Demon. Neither are whodunnits, and I don’t think the word sheep is even mentioned in either… but they are a great time, nonetheless.
- While I normally hate it when people talk in the theater, this film just demanded speculation at times. My only justifications for this minor hypocrisy is that my wife and I weren’t the only ones doing it, and that no one in the theater seemed to be having a worse experience for it. ↩︎
- It’s obviously fine for the characters to lie—that’s standard practice in a whodunnit. But it’s not good if, for example, the film shows a scene that’s important to the mystery, then has a later reveal make the previous scene inconsistent in some way. At least, I don’t appreciate it when a movie does this. (The Others, while not a whodunnit, is an example of a movie with an excellent mystery, and that never cheats when unravelling said mystery.) ↩︎
- Sheep have herds, right? A herd of sheep? This film kept referring to sheep as being in flocks, which… They aren’t birds, people. Is that an Irish thing? I think the film is set in Ireland. The (German) book is, anyway.
Darn Irish. Or darn Germans. ↩︎ - It did have a joke about God in it, which initially made me nervous (Hollywood is not famous for its respect of anything touching on the divine, particularly when the religion in question is Christianity), but I ended up finding the joke amusing and in good taste. ↩︎
Boo Ludlow 
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