Linda Holmes

not doing that when he was in muppet christmas carol like that he just played it completely straight like there's no muppets yeah but i think usually you get a little bit more of the you know the way steve martin or somebody like that is in the muppet movie you get that slightly elevated human performance and i think there are people in this like molly gordon is one nicholas braun who is already a pretty funny actor but i think who i think is really charming in this

who plays kind of the bumbling cop, you get a little bit more of a broadly comedic performance from them that I think is totally appropriate to the piece.

They had apparently.

I read about this.

This is in the production notes.

So rather than doing the like tennis ball on a stick that they often do when actors are acting opposite.

Apparently they had some stuffies or they had puppets.

It's really cute.

That the actor, and there's a quote from Hugh Jackman in the production notes saying, I've done a lot of acting opposite a tennis ball on a stick.

And he said it really did make it easier that there was something a little closer to the feel of what you're eventually going to get.

Because his, I think in particular, his scenes with the sheep are really sweet.

Yes, yes, very.

I choose a book to read out loud to them.

Detective novels, mysteries, whodunnits, all my favourites.

I know when Rodney Hollingshead was murdered, and I know who the real killer was.

And I do like the fact that all the sheep in this film, when they first kind of do the introduction of all the sheep, I think, oh, am I going to be able to keep all these sheep straight because they're all sheep?

But it really is quite easy eventually to remember who is who.

I think they do a very nice job with that.

And when the movie started, I kind of thought –

Is it going to be possible for this film to kind of crawl out from under how sad this is, how sad this premise is?