For a perfect whodunit, you need a great detective or perhaps a whole flock of them.
In the new movie The Sheep Detectives, a shepherd is murdered and the sheep, who loved and adored him, are determined to solve the crime.
It's sweet and funny, and it's quite emotional, too.
It might change the whole way you see sheep.
And murder.
I'm Linda Holmes and today we're talking about the sheep detectives on Pop Culture.
Happy Hour from NPR.
Joining me today is NPR film critic Bob Mondello.
Hello, Bob.
Good to be here.
Or should I say Bob?
Oh, is that where we're going?
Okay.
We're starting early.
Also joining us is the co-host of NPR's daily economics podcast, The Indicator from Planet Money, Waylon Wong.
Welcome back, Waylon.
Thank you.
So good to see you both.
The Sheep Detectives begins with Hugh Jackman as George, a shepherd who lives a mostly solitary life when it comes to humans, but who loves his flock of sheep so much that he reads to them at night.
Specifically, he reads them mysteries.
Why would he stop there?
He was just about to say who the killer was.
This is torture.
It was the maid, right?
The sheep have internalized the rules and the rhythms of the whodunit.
So when George himself is the victim of a murder, the sheep join together to get justice for him, just like he taught them.
The sheep, who are animated by a visual effects team, get their voices from an impressive voice cast, including Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Patrick Stewart, Chris O'Dowd, Brian Cranston, Bella Ramsey, Brett Goldstein and Regina Hall.
In town.
The human suspects and other observers are played by an equally loaded group, among them Molly Gordon, Hong Chao, Nicholas Braun, Nicholas Galatine and Emma Thompson.
It's both a pretty traditional whodunit, complete with clues and twists and a final reveal, and a story about these sheep learning how to go forward in the world without the person who took care of them and loved them.
And it's pretty darn good.
It's based on a book by Leonie Swan.
It's an Amazon original film, so we should note, Amazon supports NPR and pays to distribute some of our content.
The Sheep Detectives is in theaters now.
Waylon, I'm going to start with you.
Did you like The Sheep Detectives?
Oh, I liked it a whole bunch.
I was so charmed by this movie.
It was so cute.
It's so funny.
And it's really sincere.
But for me, not in a treacly way.
It is just a... cynicism free zone.
And I didn't realize how much I needed to be in a cynicism free zone, like a rage bait free zone, until I got in the theater and I was watching this movie.
And This movie has such obvious affection for the cozy mystery genre, which I love.
Like you can tell, they take it seriously and they want to make like a true, like exemplar of the form you know and I think it really respects its audience as well.
It like doesn't look down on people who like cozy mysteries.
Honestly, I was shocked this got a theatrical release, but I'm really glad it did.
It's great.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Bob, how about you?
Do you like those sheep detectives?
I had such a good time with this movie.
I guess I was expecting to.
When I saw the trailer, I thought, okay, this is funny.
All I could think was... sheer idiocy, right?
And they don't bleed around the bush.
And I've probably got 20 of those.
It's a great reunion for all these people.
Keep them coming.
I like it.
I had such a good time watching it, was trying to figure out what it was exactly, and the scene that did it for me was when they were trying to cross the road.
Sheep had never seen a road and they didn't know what to do.
When they got there, it just wasn't the same service mopple.
What is that?
I think it's a road, but what is it made of?
Well, not grass.
I can tell you that lily yes, are you coming?
I'm just you go on ahead.
And I thought, they're very brave.
I was really sort of sympathizing with them and empathizing with them.
They've got me now.
I'm hooked.
It's over.
It's done.
I love it.
Yeah.
You know, when I first heard the description of this movie, I kind of thought, is this a real movie?
Are they saying that the sheep are solving the crime?
What?
But it works extremely well.
And I really, really enjoyed it, too.
I think.
You know, when I see a movie like this, that does have some genuine elements of loss and grief.
There is part of me that thinks like oh, should I like make it clear to people that like oh, maybe it's not really a little kids movie, because it's sad.
But then you think about like the Lion King.
There's a lot of sadness in a lot of movies that are intended for kids.
And I personally think this is I mean, people know their own kids but I think it's a very appropriate movie for a young audience or an adult audience.
I think they've done a really nice job of splitting that difference.
I think that the humor in it to me is kinder.
It's not all sort of like juvenile humor which you get even sometimes now in the Pixar movies.
You'll get a lot of body humor and stuff like that.
It's not really like that.
It's really gentle.
I also very much like the fact that the humans in the movie.
It reminds me a little bit of how they handle the humans in something like the Muppet movie.
Yes.
Where, in order to survive and exist in this world, with these talking sheep, the humans are like elevated
The humans are a little bit more silly than a lot of these animals actors would be.
You can just feel it's like a little bigger, which I think is exactly right.
There's a famous quote from Michael Caine about not doing that when he was in Muppet Christmas Carol, like that.
He just played it completely straight like there's no Muppets.
But I think usually you get a little bit more of the.
You know the way Steve Martin or somebody like that is in the Muppet movie.
You get that slightly elevated human performance.
And I think there are people in this like Molly Gordon is one, Nicholas Braun, who is already a pretty funny actor, but I think who I think is really charming in this, who plays kind of the bumbling cop.
You get a little bit more of a broadly comedic performance from them.
That, I think, is totally appropriate to the piece.
Yeah, it feels a little bit, to me, like Babe.
Yes.
And thinking about I mean, you don't think while you're in the movie.
I thought about it afterwards about what it must have been like to act opposite.
I'm not sure what.
I mean, did they have a puppet or something?
They had apparently.
I read about this.
This is in the production notes.
So, rather than doing the like tennis ball on a stick that they often do when actors are acting opposite,
Apparently, they had some stuffies or they had puppets.
It's really cute that the actor and there's a quote from Hugh Jackman in the production notes saying I've done a lot of acting opposite a tennis ball on a stick.
And he said it really did make it easier that there was something a little closer to the feel of what you're eventually going to get.
Because his, I think in particular, his scenes with the sheep are really sweet.
Yes, yes, very.
I choose a book to read out loud to them.
Detective novels, mysteries, whodunits, all my favorites.
I know when Rodney Hollingshead was murdered.
And I know who the real killer was.
Oh, yeah, especially with the winter lamb, the kind of outcast lamb that he feeds.
He gives it a bottle.
It's so cute.
And I do like the fact that all the sheep in this film, when they first kind of do the introduction of all the sheep, I think oh, am I going to be able to keep all these sheep straight?
Because they're all sheep.
But it really is quite easy eventually to remember who is who.
I think they do a very nice job with that.
And when the movie started I kind of thought is it going to be possible for this film to kind of crawl out from under?
How sad this is, how sad this premise is.
But I think they did a good job balancing the genuine sadness of the premise and what's happening with the sheep with the comedy of the cop and Emma Thompson playing this imperious lawyer who breezes into town.
I think they did a good job with that balance.
From what I understand about it, the book is darker.
Just from a description of it, it looks – I'm afraid I haven't read it.
It looks like it was more violent.
Oh, might have been.
Substantially.
I worried initially that it was going to be –
That I was not going to be able to recommend this to parents.
I didn't have a problem with that once we got, you know, maybe 20 minutes in.
Right.
It was just clear that this was going to be fine.
What I really liked about the humor is that it's not modern.
It's not sophomoric, right?
Like Linda, you pointed out, they don't rely on like poop jokes and stuff.
It's also not glib and modern in the way that a lot of kids' movies are now where you can feel the sweatiness of like oh, we have to stuff in a bunch of current references and stuff.
And here they just really...
Don't do that at all.
And instead they rely on jokes that are kind of timeless.
Like there's a literal counting sheep joke that I laughed so hard at.
It's so funny.
And then there's these visual gags.
Like at one point in this teeny, tiny town.
You see that there's a small business that makes neon signs.
And it says discounts for locals and neon outside.
And they filmed this scene that's just in front of this neon shop.
And you're like, OK.
And then later on, you see that the police station has a neon sign outside.
This is police station.
Which is so funny to me, you know, and it's like they didn't have to do that, but they did.
And I guess I appreciate that you know Craig Mazin who adapted the book into the screenplay.
You know, I know him from Chernobyl.
And it's like he put the same amount of care into a cozy mystery about anthropomorphic sheep, solving a mystery as he did like crafting that courtroom scene where Jared Harris explains how the Chernobyl reactor melted down right.
It's like the same level of care and like attention to, like storytelling, like making sure that the actual whodunit makes sense.
And I thought the payoff for that was really satisfying and having this like quirky cast of characters that bounce off of each other in an interesting way.
Like.
Those are all the elements you need for like a really serious prestige drama too, you know, and they're here in a kid's movie.
It's great.
Yeah.
And Linda, you were talking about being able to identify the sheep, the sheeps.
I can't believe I just said sheeps.
But for sure, it's helped by the fact that some of the voices are very familiar.
You hear Bryan Cranston as one of them.
And there's no question who he is when he comes into view.
And the same is true of Patrick Stewart and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
They have personalities that we identify with, the actors who are sort of playing them, which is very useful.
It's very clever.
Yeah, there's a pair of twin sheep who are voiced by Brett Goldstein, who played Roy Kent on Ted Lasso.
And when you first hear them, it's like, oh, those are sheep that sound exactly like Roy Kent.
Like, I suspect those are the Roy Kent sheep.
And they are indeed.
And I think, like Bob said, when you use some distinctive voices and I felt like They did a good job of using distinctive voices, but I will say I did not clock everybody in the voice cast
I picked out some of them.
You know I picked out.
I went back and forth with a couple of people who had the same reaction I did, which is that they couldn't figure out whether the Patrick Stewart one was Patrick Stewart or Ian McKellen, which makes a fair amount of sense.
Right.
I did not clock Julia Louis-Dreyfus through this whole movie because I don't know her by voice, right?
She's not a person who to me has an incredibly distinctive and recognizable voice instantly for me.
But I did pick out Bryan Cranston and I did pick out, as I said, Brett Goldstein.
So I think they do a good job with the voices being distinctive and interesting without it being overwhelmingly, you know, it's not oppressively.
This is the silliest voice that you could come up with for this situation.
A lot of them are fair.
And I think the reason I didn't necessarily pick out Julia Louis-Dreyfus is that she plays it fairly straight.
She's got kind of the role of the most serious, thoughtful, they say she's the smartest sheep.
It may be nothing, but I can't stop thinking about George's hat and raincoat.
What hat and raincoat?
Exactly.
He came out in a storm.
Why didn't he put them on?
Boost me up.
She's not playing it broadly comedically most of the time, which may be why I did not pick her out as much.
But I agree with Bob about that. the scene where they're crossing the road.
And that was a lot of fun.
I think the arc of the Nicholas Braun character cop was interesting to me.
It was not necessarily where I thought they were going.
You know, he keeps clocking that the sheep are kind of helping him somehow.
And he's not sure about that.
How could that be?
And then he's like, why do these sheep always show up?
Like, why are these sheep hanging around?
And, you know, one of the issues that can come up, I think, with whodunits, and I love whodunits.
It's one of my favorite genres.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Because I think in both of those, the actual death of the person, whether it's a nice person or not, so nice person or whatever, the actual death is treated with some gravity, which I think makes it easier to care about the whodunit and to feel like – sympathetic to the desire of the detective to solve the crime, as I did for these sheep who are sort of literally lost now because they have no one to care for them.
And yet what they want to do is Do the right thing for this person that they love to love to them.
Yeah.
And I don't want to get really, really galaxy brained about it and start, you know, making like elaborate metaphors about what this movie is like really about, because I think it works on like a very simple level, if you just want to.
Treated as like a wonderful little piece of entertainment.
But I also think like they do a very nice job of exploring like grief and loss, but in a way that's still like OK for kids to interact with, you know.
And I think that there's something quite clever in using the animal POV, because I think having these sheep, who are very naive in a lot of ways, right
They literally have not left the pasture.
That's why they have trouble crossing the road the first time they encounter it.
But like having them be actually smarter than they even think they are.
It means you can comment on human behavior in a different kind of way.
In this like naive but actually super observant way, right?
Like because you're putting it into the animal POV.
And when the sheep are trying to explain, like who God is, based on what they've eavesdropped from outside the church.
That's very funny.
It's actually, it's hilarious and it's also very poignant, right?
Because you're like okay, like if you weren't in the human world fully, this is what you would make of organized religion and the way that God is explained, you know, and I I think it gives you like a ton to think about.
And there's some novels I've read recently that I've really enjoyed that are written from animal POVs, including this fabulous novel called Pony Confidential by Christina Lynch, which is about a really cranky pony trying to solve a mystery.
I guess I just like animals solving mysteries.
Apparently you're into this.
Yes, this is like a great genre for me.
But I just really love that technique of like we'll use an animal POV where they get some of human behavior but not all of it.
And you can use that to kind of comment on what makes us human and what makes the human relationships work.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, centrally, it's about relationships.
Yeah.
I'm just going to say shame on you, Bob.
I love how you were just like waiting for the right moment to spring that on us.
Bob's like, I got one more.
And you know what's great?
I got several more.
No one's going to pull the wool over their eyes.
That's true.
And you know what's great about that, Bob, is that it's true in addition to being a terrible pun.
It's also true.
It is about relationships.
That is true.
I think we all really enjoyed the sheep detectives.
I bet a lot of you will enjoy it, too.
That brings us to the end of our show.
Bob Mondello, Waylon Wong, thank you for being here to talk about this wonderfully sheepy movie.
I feel a little sheepish about all the puns, but it was great fun.
No, don't apologize.
I love them.
I love them, too.
This episode is produced by Liz Metzger, Hafsa Fathima and Mike Katziff and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy.
Hello, Come In provides our theme music.
Just a reminder that signing up for Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus is a great way to support our show, support public radio.
You get to listen to all our episodes sponsor free.
So you can find out more about that at plus.npr.org slash happy hour or you can visit the link.
There's a link in our show notes.
Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.
I'm Linda Holmes, and we will see you all next time.
