What if I told you one of the best movies of the year involved talking sheep working to solve the murder of their shepherd, played by Hugh Jackman? You’d probably say that I was crazy, or had terrible movie taste, or that I’m still suffering from the same concussion that made me dream up a movie about talking sheep detectives. But no, there is a clear winner for the best movie of the year so far, and it’s a real (not fake) movie called The Sheep Detectives.
Directed by Minions director Kyle Balda and written by Craig Mazin (yes, of Chernobyl and The Last of Us fame), The Sheep Detectives shouldn’t work. With its bright, oversaturated color palette, unapologetically twee tone, and a star-studded cast of various Americans doing British accents, on paper, The Sheep Detectives seemed more like a movie created as a fever-brained skit on 30 Rock. But instead, The Sheep Detectives feels like it was expressly created to destroy audiences’ current irony-poisoned attitude. Because beneath its silly premise and a handful of truly baffling accents, The Sheep Detectives is a deeply earnest, tender, and wistful exploration of grief and mortality.
