I was quite excited when the trailer for this movie suddenly appeared. I haven’t read the book, I wasn’t expecting it, but then it suddenly entered my world. It looked like a very unique and light-hearted take on the murder mystery genre. Sheep are cute. High production value. What’s not to like?
When the movie released and received great reviews, we decided to go and watch it. It took some time to align schedules and actually do it, which is why this post is somewhat delayed, but here it is.
My very quick thoughts about The Sheep Detectives.
What’s the idea? George Hardy is a kind shepherd who loves his sheep and reads them detective novels each night. Then he is killed. As expected, the police are hopeless, so the sheep decide to take matters into their own paws and find the killer.
What did I like? The story has many funny moments and visuals. It is, unfortunately, never extremely funny or clever, and those moments are interspersed with pretty childish humor. It’s fine, it’s a fun watch, the humor is never outright bad. But I expected something a little more creative and unique here when your main characters are a bunch of sheep. The policeman investigating is very funny and likable, while other human characters were just “fine”.
The visuals for the sheep are also very good, especially for a movie that’s not some big budget blockbuster. In general, the audiovisual side of the movie is top notch. Great voice acting.
The movie tries to introduce some bigger themes about belonging. It succeeds quite well, especially with the approach of pretending sheep become clouds when they “die”. But it felt like these themes were fighting the murder mystery going on as opposed to them strengthening each other.
Finally, the actual murder mystery/detective is also fine, but not great. There’s one major component of the reveal that’s quite clever and actually interesting to try and piece together yourself. Any other reveals keep the story going, but are not really substantial—they don’t really allow the viewer to investigate too. And that’s probably by design, because the mystery is quite thin. We never really get to know the characters and some of them have no role besides filling a stereotype (such as a butcher opposing the animal-loving shepherd).
No part of the movie is bad, not at all. Some parts are great. As a whole, it holds up nicely and it looks nice. But many parts are just “fine”—nothing outstanding, new, or interesting.
And that’s fine! It’s a cozy crime. It’s meant to be mostly about the jokes and the fun atmosphere as opposed to some really genius murder scheme. It’s about the bumbling detectives, the funny characters, everything else. The “murder mystery” is just a framework that allows everything else to happen.
Which is what makes it so confusing when the movie, at about 2/3 of the runtime, suddenly switches tone completely and becomes way more serious and creepy. Again, nothing major, nothing really scary or violent. But still way more serious than everything else in the movie has been. And then it snaps back to being silly and cozy crime again, and it just feels like the movie took an unnecessary detour?
In the end, the movie is an easy and fun watch for basically any age, I’d certainly recommend it as a “cozy crime”. But its mystery wasn’t as strong as it needed to be, nor was it as funny and quirky as it needed to be, kind of hovering in-between. Which is why, in that final third of the movie, everyone was just wondering when the sheep would shut up and the murder mystery would actually evolve and develop further ;)
I don’t really put grades or definitive statements in these quickfire reviews anymore. But people like that kind of thing, so I guess I’d give the movie a 7.5/10.
