‘The Sheep Detectives’ Made Me Baaaawl My Eyes Out

Earlier this spring, when I saw the trailer for The Sheep Detectives , I had what I have come to understand is a universal experience. When I watched Hugh Jackman, a kindly shepherd named George, read murder mysteries to his impressively realistic animated flock of sheep, I found this premise odd but charming. When I learned that George was murdered, his flock suddenly tasked with solving the crime, I found this baffling. When I saw Emma Thompson play a snappily dressed estate lawyer who reveals George's enormous fortune, I wondered how on earth someone convinced her to be in this movie. When I saw one sheep tell another sheep that he was, in fact, "a sheep detective," I found this turn of phrase ridiculous. When I saw the movie's title, The Sheep Detectives , appear onscreen, I had to laugh. What a fake-sounding title for a fake-looking movie , I thought, smugly, before watching my feature presentation, a movie about a girl who uploads her consciousness into a beaver.

And yet The Sheep Detectives never left my mind. Sometimes, as I was walking down the street, the phrase would burble up—sheep detectives!—and I would chuckle. When a friend asked if I wanted to watch a movie together, I suggested The Sheep Detectives , only slightly as a bit, and then found myself genuinely sad when my suggestion was politely rejected and we went, instead, for a walk. And then the rumors began, meaning multiple Instagram stories from distant acquaintances posting about how they had sobbed during none other than .... The Sheep Detectives. Someone offered to go with me to The Sheep Detectives out of pity, I think, because I kept bringing it up, and so this week I found myself in a 2 p.m. screening along with a smattering of retirees. I emerged two hours later with bleary red eyes and the knowledge that I had, as many others had before me, underestimated The Sheep Detectives. The wool had been lifted from my third eye: The Sheep Detectives is a marvelous movie. Emma Thompson would never have lent her formidable talent to anything less!

Before you ask: Does The Sheep Detectives accurately represent what it means to be a sheep? Not really. But this is not its remit. The movie is not about sheep; the movie is about sheep detectives , and I believe it represents this phenomenon ably.