Irresistible and slightly disappointing, often at the same time, someone (scripter Craig Mazin?; top-listed producer Tim Bevan?) had the madly wonderful idea of reconfiguring Leonie Swann’s German novel (a proposed animated production had collapsed) as a combo-platter of two favorite British genres: an Agatha Christie/Dorothy Sayers rural murder mystery; and one of those sweetly eccentric (or is it maddeningly daffy?) isolated/insulated countryside character comedies so popular a few decades back. (And before that, the old Ealing Studios model.) We open with a prologue for contented shepherd Hugh Jackman and his flock of sheep. So preferable to people! He knows them all by name & personality; he reads them a murder mystery chapter every night before bed. Then one morning, he’s found dead . . . by his sheep! Natural causes or murder? Unhappy with a lack of action by the local police, there’s but one thing for the devastated flock to do; solve the case on their own. Who says sheep are dumb animals? Lily the Sheep (voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus) takes the lead, with an all-star cast voicing the many other varieties of sheep Jackman had. Problem: how to communicate their findings to those humans in town. This is all fun, and quite touching at times (a flashback to Jackman rescuing a sheep quite emotional; as is the look at lamb prejudice). The sticking point is the CGI work on the sheep which probably needed to be either considerably more or considerably less realistic. As it stands, the technical gaffes (usually from asking the digital magic to do too much) can pull you out of the story. Also, rather like the likable Cat Who... mystery series by Lilian Jackson Braun, the clues and inevitable solution come a little too easily. No matter, you’re sure to fall for film’s nicely reserved sense of whimsy.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Not a film that first comes to mind, but watch what Gene Wilder does with a non-CGI sheep in Woody Allen’s EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX/’72. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/everything-you-always-wanted-to-know.html
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