Counting sheep is better than watching ‘The Sheep Detectives’

Once every 20 years, Hugh Jackman lends his considerable screen power to the summer’s friendliest murder mystery.

In the summer of 2006, Jackson channeled the ruthlessness that surely hides behind every matinee idol as the Tarot Card Killer in Woody Allen’s London-based trifle Scoop, which, despite its grisly premise, was a charmer of a comedy. Now, Jackman shifts from killer to victim in director Kyle Balda’s The Sheep Detectives, which is far less accomplished, and infinitely more infantile, than its antecedent, but which shares some of the same assumptions. These movies take it as a given that there is easygoing entertainment to be sussed out of various acts of wickedness, as long as the stars are appealing and the locales scenic. Call it the Murder, She Wrote theory of storytelling, though even here, The Sheep Detectives falls short: For starters, it’s about an hour longer than any given episode of Murder, She Wrote — and not in a good