Critics Are Weepy for The Sheep Detectives

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Writing headlines for reviews of The Sheep Detectives would have been much simpler if the movie had been terrible! But it’s actually good, which doesn’t quite fit the theme. Vulture’s Alison Willmore notes the film “somehow manages to be as good as it is, and the kind of movie that could stay with kids for years, being both a little disturbing and enjoyable.” The fact that it’s “a little disturbing” makes sense, considering it’s a children’s movie created by the same person who made Chernobyl and a famously emotional TV episode.

Okay, so director Kyle Balda, who you probably know from the Minions movies, has done something really interesting with The Sheep Detectives. He’s moved away from fully computer-generated animation and blended it with live-action – it’s roughly half and half. The sheep themselves are animated, but they feel surprisingly real, both in how they look and how they act. They’ve actually given these fluffy investigators some genuine emotional weight, which is a nice surprise. Here’s the buzz – or should I say, the bleating – from other critics about the film.

Alison Willmore of Vulture explains that the sheep in the movie are surprisingly moving because they feel real on screen. It’s not just how they look, but how naturally they exist within the film’s slightly fantastical world – they seem to have complex thoughts and feelings, even though the human characters largely ignore them. Like children, they absorb a lot more than people realize, even if they don’t fully understand it at the time.

Guy Lodge of Variety praised the story’s clever balance of gentle, fairytale-like narration during scenes with the animals, and lively, British comedy-style humor when focusing on the people. He felt this approach came as close as possible to satisfying both animal and human viewers, capturing the spirit of the original work.

Neil Minow of RogerEbert.com describes The Sheep Detectives as a charming and clever murder mystery, comparing it to the heartwarming Babe. Both films feature beautiful countryside settings, memorable characters, and stories with real emotional weight. Like Babe, The Sheep Detectives is enjoyable for the whole family, though the murder mystery might be a bit much for very young children, as it touches on where meat comes from. The film strikes a great balance, being easy enough for kids to understand while still offering enough depth to keep adults engaged.

What makes this film so enjoyable is how it handles the murder of a likable character – someone we’ve really grown to care about, even more than in typical detective stories. Instead of dwelling on the sadness and shock, the film quickly moves past the death and jumps into the fun, lighthearted mystery of figuring out who did it – and it’s all delightfully silly, according to Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian.

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2026-05-09 01:54