The Sheep Detectives

 

Kyle Balda's The Sheep Detective is a marvelous whodunit in the style of Knives Out but with CGI sheep as the lead investigators.

The human-to-animation ratio is about 50:50, with the most "human" aspects of the movie's clever story in the care of the sheep.

When Hugh Jackman's gentleman shepherd George is found dead outside of his trailer in a lovely little English village one morning, his loyal flock -- led by whipsmart Lily (Julia Louis-Dreyfyus) and Mopple with the encyclopedic memory (Chris Dowd) -- go on the hunt for the killer, basing their investigation on the murder mysteries George read to the flock every night.

The sheep uncover clues missed by the town's lone and hapless police officer, played by Nicholas Braun. How they lead the officer to these discoveries is rich and imaginative. He finally gets it together, and in true Christie fashion, each of the possible suspects -- the local butcher, the town vicar, a neighbor farmer, the owner of the town's inn, the victim's estranged daughter -- is revealed to have reason to see gentle George dead, but, as with the best of these pictures, their true means and opportunity are not revealed until the last reel.

The Sheep Detectives is a surprisingly fresh and enterprising treat that even though it features some terrific animated furry critters is not a kid's picture. It is a murder mystery, after all.