The Sheep Detectives Is a 'Rare' Delight

If you planned to overlook a movie about sheep trying to solve their shepherd's murder, think again. Critics are enthralled by Kyle Balda's The Sheep Detectives, a family-friendly, Agatha Christie-style mystery with an A-list cast, including Hugh Jackman, Emma Thompson, Julia-Louis Dreyfus, Patrick Stewart, Regina Hall, and Bryan Cranston. Four reviews behind the film's 95% rating on Rotten Tomatoes:

• "The whole idea just sounded ludicrous," admits New York Times critic Alissa Wilkinson, but the film itself is not. A "delightful" escape for the whole family, it's "the rare kind of movie after which you can exit the theater saying "they don't make movies like that any more!,'" she writes. It has "humor, mystery, goofiness and even sentimentality, all balanced beautifully."
• "The film knits together highly realistic animation with a live-action cast to weave a charming yarn that can delight the whole family," writes Katie Walsh for the Tribune News Service. "The real heroes are the sheep" (led by Louis-Dreyfuss' Lily), who must overcome their willfully short memories and find clues missed by the small English village's sole, bumbling policeman.

• Reminiscent of Babe, it's "accessible enough for younger viewers without condescending to them, yet complex enough to engage an adult audience," writes Nell Minow at RogerEbert.com, noting the care put into "every detail." There's "impeccable" visual effects, "delicious twists," and "diligence, imagination, warmth, and delight."
• "A rare family entertainment happy not to follow the herd," it "comes about as close as any adaptation could to being all things to all creatures great and small," writes Guy Lodge in Variety. Adapted from Leonie Swann's 2005 novel Three Bags Full, it caters to a younger audience. Still, "there's wisdom amid the silliness, as the story gently makes a case for the necessity of grief, mindfulness and mortal awareness."