There’s such a niche market for what feels like charming British films, specifically those involving animals, talking animals even. The Paddington films have managed to do perfectly, being charming, but it’s not something new if we go back to the likes of Babe and Peter Rabbit. Paddington particularly has had such a cultural impact with near perfect Rotten Tomatoes scores. The Sheep Detectives might be based on a book, but it feels in a very similar vain, and trying to capture the same charm.
The Sheep Detectives follows a flock of sheep as they team together to uncover the truth about the murder of their shepherd, who used to read murder mysteries to them in a small English village.
The single most bizarre thing to me is who wrote this film. Craig Mazin is one of the most sort after writers in the industry at the moment. Mazin shot to the top of a lot of studio wishlists after he wrote and created the HBO series, multi-award winning and critically praised Chernobyl and then once again with the video game adaptation, The Last of Us, recently being tapped to write the next Pirates of the Caribbean. His career hasn’t always been at such heights as he was a writer on Scary Movie 3 & 4, Superhero Movie, The Hangover Part II and III. What a wide career he’s had spanning many genres, and The Sheep Detectives feels very mid of the road in terms of quality.
The film very much feels like a murder mystery you can show to children to introduce them to the genre. The story is simple, and very much does feel like “my first murder mystery”. The focus is of course on the sheep, rather than what is typically the cast of suspects. Only a couple of the human characters get a decent amount of screen time and development. In a film like this it can feel very geared towards children, but it manages to balance the jokes for ones for kids, as well as some that had me laughing out loud.
The film has a very stacked cast including Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Bryan Cranston, Regina Hall, Brett Goldstein, Bella Ramsey, Chris O’Dowd, Rhys Darby, Hong Chau, Nicholas Braun, Nicholas Galitzine, Molly Gordon and Emma Thompson. No one is particularly standout as most of this cast are just the voices of the sheep, but there’s no one particularly bad, and they’re all doing a good enough job.
This is director, Kyle Balda’s first live-action directorial film. He previously had big box office success by directing both Minions movies, Despicable Me 3 and The Lorax. Balda has a particular background in visual effects and animation, which absolutely comes in handy in this film, and the VFX for the sheep is extremely impressive, I’m not fully sure how it was all done but either way it looks great.
Overall, The Sheep Detectives is a fun simple film, which might lack some character moments to make it truly memorable, but with some laughs, it makes for easy viewing which sometimes is all it needs to be. It might be predictable but is a fun introduction to the genre for many.
What did you think of The Sheep Detectives?
Flooders Films 
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