Nate At The Movies

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS.

By this point in my movie-loving journey, I should know not to write off a movie simply because it has a silly title or premise. Just take a look at KPop Demon Hunters last year; despite its straightforward title, it absolutely rocked and won Biggest Surprise at the 2026 Nateys. The Sheep Detectives is almost a shoe-in to share the same fate. I rolled my eyes when I first saw the trailer, but then people started to really love it. I had to check it out, and clearly I was going to be in for a treat; the theater was packed!

The Sheep Detectives accomplished exactly what it set out to do—tell a funny, heartwarming story about talking sheep solving a mystery—but the fact that it did so much more than that is what’s going to earn this movie its high rating from me. First off, the mystery at the heart of the movie was legitimately compelling and complex. Not so complex that I could be excused for not solving it before the sheep, but complex nonetheless. The sheep drove the story both narratively and comedically, and while it wasn’t as raucously funny as an all-timer would’ve been, there were still a lot of very funny moments. It’s hard to beat Brett Goldstein playing twin rams that just want to bash things, but if there was one line that could do it, it’d have to be God being described as “a shepherd, but also a lamb, and he’s invisible, but he’s also made of bread, and he damns things, and we eat him on Sundays”.

What surprised me most about The Sheep Detectives was its great emotional weight, and its ability to juggle three or four really important themes for kids. The movie wasn’t afraid to have its younger audience deal with death head-on, and the way the sheep learned about death mirrored the experience of a child so well. The film also took time to celebrate the “black sheep” in the form of the “winter lamb”—kind of hilarious how they didn’t use the “black sheep” saying anywhere in this movie—and dropped an absolutely crushing truth from Sebastian: “Sooner or later, the winter lamb wants to leave”. Read that line how you see fit, but no matter how you slice it, that one packs a punch. Thank God the winter lambs in this movie got some love by the end, because any alternative would’ve been unacceptable.

What’s crazy is that those aforementioned themes weren’t even my favorite one from the movie. I absolutely loved the exploration of selective memory and trauma blocking in the sheep. I’ve always loved the quote from Call Me By Your Name that speaks on this same topic—“But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything? What a waste!”—and seeing this same idea explored in a kids’ movie was pretty cool. It also led to one of my favorite quotes from Hugh Jackman’s character: “In time, all that’s left is all that’s good”. That’s really good for kids to hear—this too shall pass, but the good stays with us—and I appreciated it, too. I’ve been mourning the end of the school year and my favorite student of three years graduating, so even though I know this already, hearing that the good remains and the bad fades really helped. Dang it, kids movie; you got me!

At every turn, it seemed like The Sheep Detectives made the right choice, and it resulted in not only the biggest surprise of 2026 so far for me, but a legitimately great family movie that’s sure to stand the test of time. No one makes talking animal family films like the British! I’m also hoping that the crowd that I had at my local Regal today wasn’t an outlier; this movie deserves the big crowds and families who are going to absolutely eat up its messages. I don’t know the last time I saw a family movie that was equally hilarious, wholesome, and heartfelt and wasn’t made by one of the big animation studios. Also, let’s talk about that voice cast; they were all fantastic! After Andy Serkis’ Animal Farm, I thought it wasn’t possible for a film with talking animals to be good. Color me surprised when I learned that Lord and Miller were executive producers on this movie. They’ve given us so much, and what have we given in return?