The Sheep Detectives

Rated PG • Theaters

The Sheep Detectives, the new family-friendly murder mystery from Amazon and MGM about sheep who solve a murder, is the kind of movie that’s both enjoyable and a little disappointing.

George (Hugh Jackman) is a shepherd who loves to read murder mysteries to his sheep, never suspecting they can understand him. When George dies under mysterious circumstances, the sheep decide to solve the crime themselves, even if it means leaving their meadow for the first time and facing the fact that the human world isn’t as simple as it appears in books.

The Sheep Detectives is a fun film from start to finish. The jokes come at a rapid pace, and almost all land. The characters and world-building—both for the sheep and the classic murder-­mystery small-town inhabitants—are well developed and engaging. The elements of the murder mystery stay simple and light for children, but the film doesn’t lose any of the great twists or stakes.

Characters—including George—die and stay dead, but the deaths are no more difficult to watch than those in The Lion King or The Incredibles. Most characters are both admirable and ­sympathetic, but also flawed. Lily (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is the smartest sheep and the leader, but she can sometimes be cowardly. Sebastian (Bryan Cranston) has a moral spine but is too pessimistic to lead.

The movie uses its sheep-centric narrative for some shockingly mature (in a good way) moral themes. The sheep have the superpower of forgetting things by choice, which they use when things make them sad. This means they must make the heroic decision to remember sad truths—like their owner’s death—to bring his killer to justice and save their flock. We’re reminded of our own responsibility to choose sad truths over happy lies.

Sadly, the filmmakers also include anti-religious messages. One of the feel-good fantasies the sheep abandon is that sheep become clouds instead of dying. This new “facing reality” about death doesn’t involve replacing it with a true understanding of the afterlife; rather, the sheep keep the person they love alive through their memory.

This assertion makes other references to Christianity feel less in good faith and more like mocking dismissal. A flawed priest features prominently who—in admitting his own sins—refers to himself as a “bad shepherd.” And in an extended joke the sheep express confusion over biblical metaphors, e.g., God is a shepherd who’s also bread but also invisible.

The film also pushes other ideas parents may find questionable. The sheep partly solve the case by deciding to ignore evidence because one of the sheep looked into a suspect’s eyes and didn’t see guilt. The sheep’s instinct, we’re told, is more reliable than the evidence—or even other sheep’s intuition—because he’s been marginalized. The implication? We can—and should—ignore evidence if it contradicts the intuition of someone who’s historically marginalized. It’s an ironically anti-intellectual message for a movie that implies religion is anti-intellectual.

The Sheep Detectives is one of the most entertaining family movies I’ve seen in a while. But viewers will have to decide if its attitude toward religion is an opportunity for fruitful conversation or a reason to dismiss the film the way the film seems to dismiss Christian belief.