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"path": "/the-sheep-detectives-made-me-baaaawl-my-eyes-out",
"publishedAt": "2026-05-14T16:11:35.000Z",
"site": "https://defector.com",
"tags": [
"Animals",
"Arts And Culture",
"Defector At The Movies",
"detectives",
"sheep",
"the sheep detectives",
"wake up (dead) sheeple!",
"a movie"
],
"textContent": "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.\n\nAnd 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!\n\nBefore 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.",
"title": "‘The Sheep Detectives’ Made Me Baaaawl My Eyes Out"
}