It checks all the boxes for me: in the exact same vibe as Babe, set in a quaint English farming village, with a small-town murder mystery? Children given up for adoption? A fortune inheritance? Multiple wills? Emma Thompson? Yes please!
What I didn't expect is a stirring examination of love, death, and memory, all wrung out by a surprisingly emotive sheep voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
The sheep are all photo-realistically animated, and because they rarely share the screen with humans, you can barely tell. I suppose there are shots where they use real sheep, you know, in moments when they don't have to act, but I imagine it's easier to just fake it all the time?
Just go watch the trailer, the movie itself turns out to be exactly what you'd expect, and zero poop jokes.
This project is not part of an existing animation studio - it's from Amazon/MGM and Working Title. However, its pedigree is excellent: it's exec produced by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (the Lego and Spider-Verse series), directed by Kyle Balda, who made a bunch of Illumination movies, and adapted by Craig Mazin, who started out writing silly comedies and has since leveled up with The Last Of Us and Chernobyl. (at the Triplex on Mothers Day with Peter, Aaron, and Aki)