Everyone loves a murder mystery. The genre has persisted with remarkable breadth and depth on page and screen alike — its template formulaic, its premise simple and its pleasures endlessly renewable. Though from the outside it may appear a lofty establishment, in fact the detective story is remarkably accessible, because the very existence of a detective figure takes the perceived intellectual heavy lifting off of the audience and places it onto the archetype — be it Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot or Benoit Blanc.
The latest entry into that canon comes in the form of a PG-rated children’s movie, the premise of which feels a bit like a bad nursery rhyme. In “The Sheep Detectives,” Hugh Jackman plays George, a shepherd who reads every night to his flock from his collection of murder mystery novels and imagines they might be listening. Except they actually are listening, and in fact are rather devoted scholars of the detective genre.
The audience quickly learns the social structures through which the flock navigates life. These sheep are relatively naive, their world limited to their pasture and their hooves never having touched manmade things like pavement. They are surprisingly judgmental, welcoming only sheep born in the spring while shunning those born in the winter as outcasts. And they are generally content with their state of being, one which they are committed to maintaining by repeatedly forcing themselves to forget any painful or difficult memory.
It is within this carefully constructed order that death arrives — a sudden, unwelcome disruptor that sets the film into motion. Led by Lily, a Shetland ewe voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus and regarded as the most intelligent of the bunch, the flock decides to apply its considerable knowledge of detective fiction to solve the real-life crime in front of them. They are aided — or, perhaps more accurately, inhibited — by the bumbling investigation of local police officer Tim Derry, played by Nicholas Braun.
This investigation also forces the sheep to confront the assumptions that once defined their world. To solve the mystery, the sheep must overcome the physical and mental boundaries of the pasture and venture into unfamiliar, paved territory. They must reckon with the social hierarchies they have accepted, and rediscover the value of the flock they claim to protect. And they must relinquish the comfort in forgetfulness that has sustained their worldview, and learn instead that painful and difficult feelings are inseparable from a full and earnest life.
What makes “The Sheep Detectives” so surprising is the grace with which it handles such emotional complexity. Beneath the framework of a charming children’s movie about farm animals is a thoughtful exploration of loss and memory and a heartfelt testament to the importance of belonging. And the movie makes for a pretty good murder mystery — Emma Thompson, Molly Gordon, Nicholas Galitzine and Hong Chau are just a few members of the Agatha Christie-inspired suspect lineup.
All of these factors together make for one of the spring’s most delightful cinema-going experiences. Audiences are coming out in full force to see this film — not only children and parents, but every generation, propelling the film to its worldwide box office of $85 million and counting. And even further, “The Sheep Detectives” is not the only recent release that has captured audiences in such a way.
“Hoppers,” for example, is an animated children’s film released in March. Like “The Sheep Detectives,” “Hoppers” has a logline that reads faintly absurd, telling the story of a college student who transfers her consciousness into a lifelike robotic beaver and accidentally starts an animal revolution. Like “The Sheep Detectives,” “Hoppers” has a cast of A-list movie stars voicing animated animals — Meryl Streep, for instance, plays the Insect Queen. And, just like “The Sheep Detectives,” “Hoppers” saw improbable success for an original animated film both financially and critically, grossing almost $400 million at the global box office.
The unexpected popularity of such a mode of storytelling even extends to streaming. For a given week in the middle of May, the top movie on Netflix in the United States was “GOAT,” which centers around an animated anthropomorphic goat inspired by the story of professional basketball player Stephen Curry. Second on the platform for that same week was “Remarkably Bright Creatures,” which explores an unlikely bond between an elderly widow and an octopus. Another chart-topping film was “Swapped,” which follows the accidental body-swapping of a mammal and a bird within a fairytale woodland.
Though their premises are distinctly peculiar, these are all legitimate movies. They star Academy Award-winning actors like Sally Field and Michael B. Jordan. They sport PG or PG-13 ratings that somehow serve not to diminish their appeal for audiences with ages above single digits, but to amplify the general level of whimsy that surrounds them, leading to the unprecedented success of these movies. And they continue to bring in substantial amounts of revenue for their studios.
The brand of family-friendly movie that is actually enjoyable for the whole family to watch — routine and rampant in the late 20th century — has grown fewer and further between. Sure, some Pixar films dabble with mature themes or drop in a joke above the child’s head for the parent’s enjoyment, but films as a whole in the past two decades have leaned on the PG-13 rating as a crutch to guarantee interest from both young adult and adult audiences.
What “The Sheep Detectives” understands is that accessibility does not have to come at the expense of depth. The detective story thrives because it invites audiences in rather than shutting them out. So, too, does “The Sheep Detectives” extend that same generosity to its viewers — of all ages. The movie trusts children to learn that hard emotions are a necessary and important part of growing up. It trusts adults to give in to whimsy and sentiment with sincerity, rather than cynicism. And, of course, it trusts sheep — like the great detectives who have come before them — to crack the case.
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