Alright, I have a confession to make. One that may lose me a lot of respect. Until very recently, I thought Babe was overrated. Yeah, the widely beloved, Best Picture Oscar nominated 1995 film about an adorable pig who finds his place in the world as an unlikely sheep-herder. Yes, I had seen it dozens of times–it was practically forced on me by my younger sibling on repeat in my household. Likely at the age of 11, I had begun to be repelled by the sentimentality that Babe so openly displayed. I wanted less touchy-feely, more dark and cool. While that mindset probably only lasted a few years, I never really gave Babe a rewatch to appreciate it. The reason why I’m bringing up this children’s film from over 30 years ago? A true spiritual successor has finally come out. And it’s making me look back and question a lot of my mindset as a kid.
The film I speak of is The Sheep Detectives, directed by Kyle Balda in his live action debut (he previously directed several of the Despicable Me and Lorax film franchises). Sheep Detectives is a legitimate whodunnit story about a kind man named George (Hugh Jackman), who has made a peaceful life for himself as a shepherd in a rural English town. He loves and takes immaculate care of his flock, even reading murder mystery novels to them every evening. However, one morning, he is found dead from foul play outside of his trailer. It’s now up to his loyal (and far more intelligent than he even gave them credit for) sheep to help the bumbling local authorities solve this murder using their knowledge from the novels they were read, before they are sold to a new owner who wants them for more than their wool.
Much like Babe, this is a partial live action film with animals who talk (strictly to each other) through the magic of realistic CGI. Like any modern-day family film, Sheep Detectives boasts an impressive ensemble of celebrities lending their voices to the motley flock of sheep, including Sir Patrick Stewart, Brett Goldstein, Regina Hall, Bryan Cranston, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. And something this film definitely has more of than Babe is a charming cast of human characters as well. This makes complete sense after all–it’s a murder mystery and we need suspects we actually know and care about to establish proper stakes. I particularly enjoyed the chemistry between Police Officer Tim Derry (Nicholas Braun) and reporter Elliot Mathews (Nicolas Galitzine) as they bicker their way through solving the mystery while the sheep are shoving clues in their faces.
One of my favorite aspects of this film is not only is it a functionally good mystery story, but it has a well developed ecosystem within both the small town of humans and the sheep. We see a little of this in Babe with the “Ba Ram Ewe” call for help being universally understood by sheep regardless of flock. But here, we now see many more fascinating details of fictional sheep culture such as their ability to willingly wipe a specific memory from their minds, or their belief that they don’t die, but simply transition to clouds in the sky. And these little details play into the story beautifully throughout the film. Conversely the fictional town of Denbrook has as much charm and loving detail as its many colorful citizens. Something I appreciate more than anything in writing is a well developed, lived in world. Even if that world merely consists of a rural town and a sheep farm.
A quality that also works equally well for this movie is how earnest it is. A kids film these days can easily devolve into potty and slapstick humor, a montage of pop culture references, or little “wink wink” lines only adults can appreciate. Sheep Detectives is thankfully lacking any of that, trusting the story and the charm of the characters to carry the film. And even better, it allows several moments for some of the more somber beats to just breathe. Without spoiling too much, I cried about as much at the end of this film as I would for several acclaimed dramas. Like any of my favorite kids movies, this one not only assumes its young audience are intelligent, but also emotionally mature enough to handle some of the more difficult topics that it addresses. And the overall message that we get from the film? Again, I don’t want to spoil anything, but I’ll just say it’s more important than ever at this point in time.
Circling back to the topic of Babe, it is so rare that I like a movie so much that it allows me to retrospectively look back on another one I made an unfair judgment on, and realize how good it was as well. But that’s exactly what The Sheep Detectives has done for me. Its charm, intelligence, and heart make it not only a spiritual successor to Babe, but a classic in its own right that will hopefully be beloved in the years to come.
