A crime has been written... in the corral

It is not common for a director specializing in animation to pivot to live-action convincingly. And it is even rarer for the leap to be even more successful than their previous work. A notable surprise, then, is The Sheep Detectives, where Kyle Balda, one of the barons of the Gru and Minions franchise, brings to the screen the homonymous novel by Leonie Swann (published in Spanish by Salamandra), starring a woolly flock that sets out to solve a murder. It could be argued that the fact that the animals talk and move thanks to digital effects places the film on a borderline with Balda's previous experiences, but far from resorting to caricature, the filmmaker optimizes hyperrealistic technology to make it the humorous pillar of the proposal, reserving eccentricity for details that enrich the background, such as the abundance of neons that incongruously illuminate the small British town where the story takes place.

The screenplay by Craig Mazin, who takes a break from the drama of Chernobyl and The Last of Us to return to his comedic roots, transfers the literary material to a tone suitable for all audiences, but the gags are just as meticulous in the sequences where the sheep wander alone as when they interact with the illustrious faces of Emma Thompson, Hugh Jackman, and Nicholas Braun, who after embodying Cousin Greg from Succession once again sublimes stupidity in the skin of a clumsy police officer.

[Consult the screenings in Catalan version at this link]