Kyle Balda
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…the movie feels like a spiritual successor to the aforementioned “Babe” in how it sneakily explores profound themes of grief, loss and mortality through the guise of a kid’s film about talking farm animals.
…perhaps leading the viewer to think that this is going to be something along the lines of the 1995 classic "Babe."
Some have branded the film as Babe meets Knives Out, an obvious but not inaccurate description.
If we ranked live-action talking animal adventure films from best to worst, Babe (1995) would probably be at the top…
"The Sheep Detectives," like "Babe" before it, deals with death, it does so in a sensitive manner appropriate for children…
No doubt much of the audience showed up expecting a straightforward, Pixar-esque talking animal film, or a variation on Babe (1995).
…think “Knives Out” meets “Babe”…
Some have branded the film as Babe meets Knives Out, an obvious but not inaccurate description.
…while The Thursday Murder Club and the Knives Out films satisfy my craving for humor and mystery…
Or, if you prefer, Agatha Christie locks horns with Knives Out.
El éxito reciente de whodunits como 'Puñales por la espalda', fuertemente influenciados por las novelas de Agatha Christie, ha evolucionado el género…
…some are describing as Babe meets Knives Out…
…a mash-up of the naive cuteness of the Paddington films…
…striking a tone that’s similar to “Babe” or the “Paddington” films…
…con suficiente corazón sincero como para disfrutarse casi como si de una de «Paddington» se tratase…
The Sheep Detectives is the biggest family movie surprise since Paddington.
…there is simply no version of reality where anyone, least of all me, walked out of that trailer three months ago expecting to compare this film to “Babe,” “Watership Down,” or even the holy grail of modern family cinema, “Paddington.”
Its setting is caught somewhere between the whimsical, colourful world of Paddington and a hard-boiled murder-mystery.
The Thursday Murder Club (2025)
Directed by Chris Columbus
influenced The Sheep Detectives (2026)
Themes
…while The Thursday Murder Club and the Knives Out films satisfy my craving for humor and mystery…
Ejemplo de ello son la serie 'Solo asesinatos en el edificio' y la película de Netflix 'El club del crimen de los jueves'…
It’s so postcard-perfectly British that it makes The Thursday Murder Club look like Happy Valley.
…following the bellyflop of the 2025 adaption of Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club, it’s nice to see you can make one of these films that does have a little more heart and soul to it.
…the whodunnit boom has been racking up bodies at a rate to rival John Wick, from Knives Out to The Thursday Murder Club…
Think of “The Thursday Murder Club” (2025). It is as authentically British as Times Square is New York.
Babe: Pig in the City (1998)
Directed by George Miller
influenced The Sheep Detectives (2026)
Themes Visuals
Murder, talking sheep and philosophy intertwine to create echoes of “Babe: A Pig in the City” and “Old Yeller.”
Balda’s film feels less like “Happy Feet” and more like “Babe: Pig in the City” in its crafting of a world and characters that feel lived in and inviting.
…as few did the dark and often weird Babe: Pig in the City (1998)…
Apart from those little pokey yellow things, the character designs remain stiff and ugly, randomly pieced together from a junk drawer full of spindly legs, barrel torsos, and huge schnozzes; although Despicable Me 3 spares younger viewers the sight of Dr. Nefario, the Despicable Me and Despicable Me 2 supporting character who looked like he was imported from the Harkonen home world in David Lynch’s Dune , it does add what appears to be a grotesque, ballooning caricature of Gerard Depardieu, as well as the sight of the Bosc-pear-inspired Silas Ramsbottom (Steve Coogan) being unceremoniously excreted down a small aperture by his toucan-faced successor at the Anti-Villain League, Valerie Da Vinci (Jenny Slate).
The CGI that details the sheep’s expressions and actions look realistic, but avoid the mistakes of The Lion King remake.
Contrasted with, say, the uncanny valley of 2019’s The Lion King’s critters, the sheep here achieve incredible facial expressiveness that evokes recognizable vulnerability.
…much as with Disney’s “live-action” Lion King remake and countless others, the depiction of animals here feels more creepy than cute…
This is where the series makes the most of its ’70s-era setting, as there are multiple references to martial arts films including Game of Death , with the Minions donning versions of Bruce Lee’s signature yellow jumpsuit.
The travel sequences and overwrought adventures recall DreamWorks’ dreary Penguins of Madagascar, and Minions suffers from many of the same problems.
“Minions” is a straight-up crowd pleaser and reminded me an awful lot of another quality movie featuring scene-stealers from another franchise, “Penguins of Madagascar.”
It’s a ploy that didn’t work terribly well for the “Penguins of Madagascar,” and fares even worse in this case, though young kids may enjoy the hullabaloo of what amounts to a manic but rarely inspired prequel—cinematic hamburger rather than filet minion.
As with “Penguins of Madagascar,” it attempts to take the hilarious sidekicks from an animated series and put them center stage.
Like the Penguins of Madagascar before them, these Minions spun off (from the mega-popular Despicable Me films) don't so much go on an adventure, in their own solo movie, as run a fool's errand.
Not as strange or funny as “Penguins of Madagascar,” the “Despicable Me” offshoot chases a series that already included octopi guns and shrunken elephants, not to mention its lovable baddie’s vast army of baby babbling yellow whatzits.
El filme incluye una serie de referencias a las travesuras y rutinas de los niños de The Little Rascals (1994) –principalmente aquellas situaciones en donde la estatura de los más pequeños es ridiculizada porque se les considera incapaces de realizar tareas que sólo las personas altas pueden ejecutar–, y los directores, Pierre Coffin (Despicable Me, 2010) y Kyle Balda (The Lorax, 2012), intentan reproducir el aspecto retro de la época en que sitúa la mayor parte del filme: los sesenta en Estados Unidos e Inglaterra.
I liked the dual homage to Mozart’s opera “The Magic Flute,” with one minion humming an aria by birdcatcher Papageno and another embracing a fire hydrant and yelling “Papagena!”
The filmmakers are conscious of this silent heritage, judging by how they borrow from Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush and Modern Times .
Finding Nemo (2003)
Directed by Andrew Stanton
influenced Despicable Me 3 (2017), The Sheep Detectives (2026)
Themes
…the only other film in cinema history that managed to combine all these qualities this perfectly while also delivering a fantastic narrative was Finding Nemo. (2003)…
A base example of this is the presence of the cartoonishly-ugly new head of the Anti-Villain league (voiced by Jenny Slate), whose presence is limited to just one scene where she berates and fires Gru and Lucy, but even its idea of an Easter egg just reads as nasty (in the opening scene, Gru callously and clearly kills a Finding Nemo-esque clown fish with his submarine).
It’s a joke, and a meta movie reference to the competing studio Pixar’s Finding Nemo franchise (Nemo is a clownfish with a tiny malformed fin).
More irksome, they’re at the centre of a joke that takes aim at Finding Nemo — a glib bit of homage that only illustrates how far out of Pixar’s class Gru and his crew are.
Most disappointing (and disturbing) is a brief scene that, in what has to be seen as a shameful effort to bait "Finding Nemo" studio Pixar into an on-screen "war," seems to show a clownfish's fins being unceremoniously sheared off by a Minion-controlled rocket.
Modern Times (1936)
Directed by Charlie Chaplin
influenced Despicable Me 3 (2017), Minions (2015)
Visuals
The filmmakers are conscious of this silent heritage, judging by how they borrow from Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush and Modern Times .
There are plenty of other outlandish jokes here, such as a French character that's a spitting image of Gerard Depardieu, a rather outré depiction of a fictional European island (whose inhabitants include lots of cheese-eating kids, a bunch of drunks and a somewhat offensively rendered woman with major facial hair) and, in what may be the film’s piece de resistance, two laugh-out-loud Minion sketches: one that may be a direct reference to the song-and-dance number in Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, and a prison sequence scored to Pharrell’s hit “Freedom.”
Some of it is dark, like the story of a sheep who was raised on the carnival and there are some “Old Yeller” style realities that may be upsetting to very young children.
Add that all up, sprinkle it with a slice of Agatha Christie, a bit of Animal Farm and the small town element of Murder She Wrote and, well , you get the picture.
Murder She Wrote, among others, comes to mind, with Lily seeking out the killer, helped by the slightly dippy but adoring Mopple.
It's a hilarious concept, especially for anyone who ever wondered what the "Ghostbusters" Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man would have looked like had Dan Aykroyd's Ray Stanz thought about a Twinkie instead.
Rather than conjuring up memories of Alvin and the Chipmunks or 2011’s The Smurfs, it instead harkens back to witty, wordplay-driven British comedies of yore.
…back before the genre got tainted by lazy TV-to-live-action adaptations like The Smurfs and the dumpster fire of Disney's live-action output.
Shows like Only Murders in the Building and The After Party are a lot of fun…
Ejemplo de ello son la serie 'Solo asesinatos en el edificio' y la película de Netflix 'El club del crimen de los jueves'…
But the British writer-director shares directing credit with Christophe Lourdelet, who worked on the art for “Minions” and “Despicable Me 2,” and Jennings’ warmth complements Lourdelet’s visual zaniness.
Sing is the latest from Illumination Entertainment, which also brought us the double bummers The Secret Life of Pets and Minions.
It would probably help, though, if you thought of "Sing" as more akin to Illumination's " Minions " -- the 2015 flyweight "Despicable Me" spinoff -- than to that original "Despicable Me."
While Jennings’ presence hasn’t quite led to a Pixar-level bump in quality, this is a clear step up from the likes of The Secret Life Of Pets and the endless Minions-related movies.