The Sheep Detectives
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.
I first heard about this movie on Letterboxd actually. I was going through upcoming movies and this movie popped up. It just said Hugh jackman was in it and it was about sheep trying to solve a murder after there shepherd gets murdered and I remember thinking “that is so stupid why is Hugh wasting his time on this.” Cut to me now after just watching this movie and the only thing I’m thinking is how beautiful this movie truly is.
The Sheep Detectives is truly an amazing movie. It succeeds at all fronts being a great mystery movie, having great characters, being really funny and most of all, having a beautiful theme. That’s when this movie truly shines. When it tackles the idea of losing someone and what that does to you. The pain it causes and how to move forward with that. Truly that’s the best part of the film and why it’s so good to me. I just recently lost someone and this movie really brought up how it feels when that happens and how best to move forward so well, it’s really astonishing how a movie about sheep’s solving a murder can do that but this movie does!
Now on to the other good things about this movie the mystery itself is really well done. It’s one of those things where from the very beginning you’re invested you wanna know who killed George and how and because of that you are paying so much attention to every clue, suspect everything. And the movie does a great job of giving you a cast of great characters and suspects to theorize about. And the twists are AMAZING. And you won’t see them coming. The movie also does a great job of establishing why George is such a good shepherd and what you should care about him, which only makes you more invested in the story. Hugh jackman also gives a great performance as per usual. Julia Louis-Dreyfus is also great as Lily, Nicholas Galitzine is great as well and Nicholas Braun is I think my favourite performance of the movie. His character starts off kind of annoying and stupid but as the movie continued he quickly became one of my favorite characters and really funny. The movie as a whole it pretty funny too. The script for the movie is also amazing and if you pay close enough attention you can totally figure out the mystery before the end! The clues are all there.
My only two gripes is that although the movie does a great story there are two conveniences that are important to the movies resolution that are just to easy. There not build up super well and they just feel like lazing writing. Which is weird because the rest of the movie is done so well.
SPOILERS
Ok so the two conveniences are George’s ghost coming out of nowhere and helping lily. I’m not really sure what that was, did she actually see him? Was it a memory? Or a hallucination? Idk but I hate that trope in movies and TV of characters seeing dead friends in pivotal moments to help them. Yeah it’s nice and emotional but it also very rarely ever makes any sense. And the other one is the two rams just happening to realize this is the moment to be brave and run and eventually find the other sheep’s in the exact moment they need someone to stop the killer from getting away. Like it’s a nice callback with the ramming but it’s way too easy. The reveal of the reporter being the killer was GENIUS tho. Completely caught me off guard, it was set up so well and I even noticed that green bed sheet hung up on the clothes line earlier and I thought to myself “Looked like the green on George’s hand.” But I still didn’t get it 😫 gosh I’m dumb sometimes.
Overall the sheep detective is a beautiful movie that is way better than most people would think a movie about sheep’s solving a murder would be, a truly incredible masterful emotional movie that will either make you cry or almost get you there.
8.9/10
