The Billie Eilish doco and other new movies everyone will be talking about this week
PG (109 minutes)
Sheep Detectives adds a new dimension to the casual crime genre. It also redefines the term “woollyhead.” In this murder story, the crime is solved by a flock of sheep whose powers of deduction rival that of Miss Marple.
The film is a very loose adaptation. Three Bags FullThe 2005 bestseller was originally written in German but is set in an Irish village. The author of the book uses the pseudonym Leonie Swann, preferring to keep her real name secret although the book has been translated into 26 languages, and encourages a follow-up.
However, the screen version is essentially English. The human characters are variations on the types that populate countless British sitcoms. There is a retarded young police officer, a religious priest and a butcher who wants to turn sheep into mutton. The only thing exotic is the sheep; A wide variety of species come across as such fierce individualists that the word “sheep-like” becomes as redundant as “woolly-headed.”
The other surprise is the identity of the victim: Hugh Jackman takes on the role of George Hardy, the shepherd of the flock; this man’s early death means Jackman is largely seen in flashback. A vegetarian who hates the butcher, he considers his sheep his best friends and relaxes by reading crime stories to them every evening. In these cases, Lily, a fawn Shetland voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, usually manages to guess the culprit; This will be an invaluable skill in the days to come.
