In The Sheep Detectives, little could go wrong with talent like Hugh Jackman as Shepherd George and sheep voices the likes of Julia Louis Dreyfus and Patrick Stewart, and real humans the likes of Emma Thompson. Breeds are well represented like Norfolk Horns, Shetland, and Castlemilk Moorit.
The animal allegory would make Aesop happy as well as being just cute tales without heavy metaphoric lifting. One of the milder motifs is the prejudice against the Winter sheep, a little on derided for not being born during spring. Lesson learned about tolerance and acceptance.
Shepherd reads mystery stories o sheep, he is murdered, and sheep figure they’ve heard enough mysteries to figure out who done it. Besides this ingenious conceit, the story is lucid about loss and death, the latter completely unknown except for two of the sheep.Most of them believe sheep just morph into clouds.
After crossing a road with strong encouragement from their leaders, the sheep cross over into other allegorical experiences that mature them into responsible not naïve living beings. Although it all sounds serious, it’s not, for humor abounds for adults and kids both.
Director Kyle Balda (Minions) has his sterling live action debut with The Sheep Detectives. Nicholas Braun plays a much better clueless town cop than could be expected. All in all, there’s not a down moment in this comedic allegory that stands on its own next to such probably successful ones as another Toy Story this summer.
There’s always room for genius.
Sheep Detectives
Director:Kyle Balda (Minions, Despicable Me 3)
Screenplay: Craig Mazin, Leonie Swann (from novel Three Bags Full)
Cast: Hugh Jackman (Les Miserables, Song Sung Blue)
Length: 1h 49m
Rating: PG
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts NPR’s It’s Movie Time and Cinema Classics as well as podcasts Back Talk and Double Take (recently listed by Feedspot as two of the ten best NPR Movie Podcasts) out of WCBE 90.5 FM, Columbus, Ohio.Contact him at JohnDeSando52@gmail.com