Sheep Detectives solve moviemaking challenges

Movie Minutes with Robin Holabird : NPR

Since ewe herd my list of wooly puns when I reviewed Shaun the Sheep I promise to baaa-ck off for the rest of this piece about a new entry into the fold.  Counting sheep movies a genre? Well sort of—besides Shaun you find a flock for a pig to herd in Babe.  Or check out violence of the lambs in an Australian horror film called Black Sheep, a much better entry than Nevada’s Godmonster of Indian Flats about a mutated lamb terrorizing Virginia City. Now, The Sheep Detectives enters the mix, ranking right up there with Shaun and Babe as a family friendly film that appeals to both adults and kids by combining wry observations with physical pratfalls and other comic routines. As the title implies, a bunch of sheep get involved in a whodunnit, with writers Craig Mazen and Leonie Swan knowing and following rules of the game, coming from the mouth of the smartest sheep in a flock shepherded by Hugh Jackman. A kindly shepherd, Jackman’s George loves his sheep and reads mysteries aloud to the flock every night, receiving reactionary bleats at various points. But as a humorist like cartoonist Gary Larson suspects, those noises just might transform into detailed thoughts. Mixing dialogue read by the likes of Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Bryan Cranston, director Kyle Balda also deals with CGI creations animated by a company called Framestore.  The animated creatures more than hold their own with a terrific cast that includes not only Marvel superhero Jackman but Oscar winner Emma Thompson.  Definitely important, such top-notch

production helps, but the quality that raises The Sheep Detectives to ewenique (sorry, couldn’t resist) heights comes from a warmhearted story that values characters—human or animal.