Buffet Infinity sounds like a gimmick, and it is. But it’s executed, despite a high degree of difficulty, to near-perfection. This Canadian horror comedy, directed by Simon Glassman, assembles an entire narrative out of fake vintage, low-budget TV commercials and an occasional news clip, presented as though the viewer were flipping past them.
Buffet Infinity is set in a small town in Alberta, presumably in the 1980s or early-1990s, and it soon coalesces into a story about two rival restaurants: one a sandwich shop with a sought-after secret recipe, the other a rapidly-growing, all-you-can-eat buffet specializing in giant, grotesque meals.
There’s also the inevitable eccentric personal injury lawyer, sinister insurance ads, pawnshop employees who sing, and superhero mascots. It's presented in painstaking detail, down to what actual VHS-era TV commercials looked like. Eventually, things take a sinister, more violent turn, with talk of cults, people disappearing, and other oddities. SCTV was clearly an influence, as was Amazon Women on the Moon.
Buffet Infinity, launched in theaters in late April, lands on VOD on May 8, joining Mile End Kicks, Two Women, and Nirvanna: The Band - the Show - the Movie as Canadian films of consequence to arrive in the U.S. this year. If it gains a foothold, I could see it becoming a cult midnight movie.
Thanks to Buffet Infinity, the film about a group of talking sheep who come together to solve a murder wasn’t even the strangest thing I saw this week. That would be The Sheep Detectives, which stars Hugh Jackman as George, a shepherd in the English countryside, whose flock of sheep is able to speak to each other in human voices when no people are within earshot. George can’t hear them, but that doesn’t stop them from reading murder mysteries to the flock every night.
When George is bumped off, the sheep (voiced by the likes of Bryan Cranston, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Regina Hall, and Patrick Stewart) team up to figure out who did it, inspired by those mystery books. They’re choosing from a group of human suspects that includes Hong Chau, Tosin Cole, Conleth Hill, and Molly Gordon, who shows up as Jackman’s long-lost daughter. (There’s a subplot calling out the Catholic Church for mishandling adoption records.)
Structurally, The Sheep Detectives isn’t that different from the Knives Out films, with the sheep collectively playing the part of Benoit Blanc. It also borrows a page from the Paw Patrol cartoons, in that the human authority (Nicholas Braun’s bumbling policeman) is so incompetent that the animals have to step in and do his job for him.
The Sheep Detectives is based on Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story, a novel by Leonie Swann that was pretty popular back in 2005. It was directed by Kyle Balda, the main director of the Despicable Me/Minions franchise, and was written by Chornobyl’s Craig Mazin. Overall, it’s cute and heartwarming, and the mystery's resolution was a surprise. And it avoids giving the talking sheep an uncanny valley effect, unlike those abominable live-action Lion King films.