The Sheep Detectives (2026)

Paddington fans, assemble.

I was predisposed to loving this. I’m a Paddington guy, I’m a Puss in Boots: The Last Wish guy, and the early buzz had me primed. So take this with the appropriate grain of salt. But god, this hit.

It’s just such a solid, fun, touching family film in a way that honestly feels like a movie they would have made in the 90s. I was shocked at how deep it goes. Like, genuinely existential. The stuff it has to say about loss and sitting in painful memories and not running from grief is way more thoughtful than I had any right to expect from a movie with a sheep on the poster. I cried for two hours straight. Just openly weeping in the theater at a cartoon sheep. This is near-masterpiece territory for me.

The one knock, and it’s a real one, is the whodunit reveal. I love a mystery. I was actively trying to solve it the whole time. And the cast of suspects is so thin and there are basically no clues planted earlier that when the answer comes it just lands as “huh, okay.” It’s the dumbest part of an otherwise smart movie. Costs it a star for me.

The performances are stacked though. Julia Louis-Dreyfus is functionally the lead and she’s incredible, which is wild because all the marketing is built around Hugh Jackman. And Cousin Greg with the worst British accent ever committed to film is doing something special. Genuinely charming. I laughed every time he was on screen.

I will admit the trailer looked like absolute slop and I am thrilled to be wrong. Amazon’s slate this year has been kind of stacked and I don’t know how to feel about that, but the movies are good so I guess we accept our new overlords.

Currently failing to convince my family this is worth their time. Please go see it so I have someone to talk to about it.

Also on Letterboxd