Hugh Jackman is a sheep herder who lives in a caravan in some rural town in England. He spends all his days tending to a flock of sheep. In the evening the sheep gather round and Jackman reads mystery stories to them. Well surprise surprise when the sheep are by themselves they talk in the Queen's English. Jackman is murdered and suspicion falls on his estranged daughter from America who has come for a visit. It's up to the sheep to solve the murder of Jackman and somehow communicate to the police whodunit.
This is sort of a family film which has a lot of whimsy make that a whole lot of whimsy. The sheep all have individual personalities and they are voiced by actors British and American actors. Besides Jackman, Emma Thompson, Nicholas Braun and Conleth Hill are the actual human actors.
Obviously the sheep are animated. The director Kyle Balba started his career in film working for Industrial Light and Magic and had animated films like
A Bug's Life, Mars Attacks and
Monster's Inc. so he knew his way around integrating computer animation with live action.
There's nothing particularly bad about this film although I have to say I didn't particularly care for it.
The Sheep Detectives just seems to have a very serious case of "the cutes.'' The film at times wallows in it's own sentimentality and cleverness. Yes it has some funny stuff in it. However you also have to endure a lot of sheep talk about their place in the universe. I enjoy fantasy films as much as the next film nerd but even I have my limits. And come on, this is a film about talking sheep.
As an aside, I've spent some time around actual sheep and I can state that they are very stupid creatures.
The film was written by Craig Mazin, the running time is 109 minutes.
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