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If you’ve ever felt a visceral desire to see Sam Neill fondle sheep testicles and Miranda Richardson barehanding a sheep turd — and who hasn’t? — then fire up Rams on Hulu. It’s an Aussie adaptation of a 2015 Icelandic film about two sheep-farmer brothers who are long estranged despite living right next door to each other. One whiff of this one betrays the formula of quaint, provincial dramedies, although there’s always a chance it’ll upend such expectations.
RAMS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: Colin Grimurson (Neill) talks to sheep. “You’re beautiful. You’re beautiful,” he tells them as he herds them around his lovely Western Australia acreage. Perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn that he has more to say to sheep than to other people. It’s a lonely life out there even though his brother Les (Michael Caton) lives within spitting distance. They haven’t spoken a word to each other since the Mesozoic, lugging grudges around like balls and chains on their brains. Colin’s sheepdog finds a dead ewe and its abandoned lamb just over the fence, so he picks up the mewing baby, shoves it in the door to Les’ house and buggers off. As usual, they enter the local sheep breeder competition, and as usual, their Kalgan Horn rams are the two finalists. New vet in town Kat (Richardson) declares Les’ big boy the winner and neither of the Grimurson bros seem happy about it. They’re just a couple of inscrutable old fahhhts.
To be fair, Colin is less inscrutable next to Les, who’s a violent, possibly homicidal alcoholic. Tragedy strikes when Colin discovers that their prize flocks — and those of all the shepherds in the area — are infected with a disease requiring mass euthanization and the burning of facilities, e.g., the barn his and Les’ father built by hand 90 years ago. Kat does what she must and calls in authorities, including a glib government pissant who initiates a Dept. of Agriculture vs. Dept. of Angry Old Men subplot. Les blames Colin for this development, so he fires a few bullets through his windows. The local farmers think the near-eradication of all their work is overkill, and they definitely have a point, but what else can they do?
As Les gets arrested for resisting the feds, Colin euthanizes his herd himself. Horrific, sure, but it allows him to shepherd three healthy ewes and one heavy-testicled ram into the spare bedroom for a little secret breeding operation. To cover up the smell, he tosses some prawns in the rubbish bin and leaves the lid off, but that doesn’t dissuade Kat from stopping by for a sip of wine at Christmas. He keeps her out on the porch, because in the house, the sheep are getting on with a good holiday humping. So, inventory: outlaw sheep, simmering sibling feud and a painfully realistic third-act wildfire. Something has to give here, doesn’t it?
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain hath wrought many of these type of earnest small-community not-quite-comedies. See also: Saving Grace, Waking Ned Devine and more recently, Wild Mountain Thyme.
Performance Worth Watching: In terms of Neill’s filmography, Rams isn’t exactly Jurassic Park or Possession. But he wisely sidesteps many gruff-old-bugger cliches to find the sensitive spots in his character, who’s clearly more than just a coot.
Memorable Dialogue: Kat nails Colin’s personality right off the bat when he drops by her office: “You’re a welcome distraction from fecal samples.”
Sex and Skin: So many closeups of sheep nards. So, so many. OK, it’s only three or four, but it feels like 10 too many.
Our Take: There are times when Rams comes perilously close to being Deez Sheep Nuts: Da Movie (or Ball Fondlers, the A-Team parody in the Rick and Morty universe). It’s not really about animal husbandry, but the subtext is loud and clear: If they can’t spend their time coercing sheep to f—, these two old coots would be even more miserable than they are now and their lives would have no meaning. There’s a scene in which Colin watches as his burlyboy ram mounts one of its harem, and the guy is delighted in a manner that borders on creepy voyeurism. It’s quite funny to be honest, and a nice bit of acting by Neill.
Otherwise, the film tends to hit its share of boilerplate story beats, from Colin’s warm friendship with the nice-lady vet to the inevitable resolution of the brotherly rivalry. Screenwriter Jules Duncan and director Jeremy Sims take a stab at topical relevance by including the modern environmental concerns or life in Western Australia — we’re all too aware of the wildfires that have devastated the country, the product of global climate change — but it feels only partially realized and tacked on, and it fattens the film’s runtime to a patience-testing 118 minutes. It’s not as funny as it could be, and the conclusion is an anticlimactic feelgood wheeze. But Neill and the supporting cast are strong enough in their well-considered performances to make them a genial bunch of country folk worth spending some time with, even when they’re casually handling the genitalia and/or leavings of farm animals.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Rams is a likeable enough slice of rural life to make it worth a watch, if your tastes tend to run mild.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.
Stream Rams on Hulu
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