Cinema: The New Pictures, Sep. 5, 1955

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In his broader, slapstick way, Fernandel in Sheep takes on the tricky business of multiple roles, after the fashion of Alec (Kind Hearts and Coronets) Guinness. Separately, and in some technically flawless group scenes, he plays Papa Saint-Forget, a crippled, bitter old vintner, and five quintuplet sons, Alain, Bernard, Charles, Désiré, and Etienne. The episodic action begins in Trezignan, a French village where some 39 years before the film begins, Papa Saint-Forget, wanting a daughter, has become the unhappy parent of the five boys. In an effort to revive the prosperity that was Trezignan's when the quints were babies and the glory of all France, a committee decides to round up the brothers for a gala celebration of their 40th birthday.

Papa Saint-Forget would just as soon forget his offspring—they had been taken away from him as infants and designated a "national monument" by the government. To make matters worse, the five, in the old man's view, had all turned out unsatisfactorily. "At their mother's funeral," he fumes, "they appeared, wearing gloves!" Nevertheless, the committee decides to go ahead with the fete, dispatches the boys' godfather to round them up. As portrayed by Fernandel, they are an odd lot indeed:

— Alain is the famous proprietor of Paris' most chichi beauty salon, a bewildering institution where the elegant clientele has its hair dried in battalion formation, and even the elevator boy speaks English. As Alain, in a ruffled shirt, Fernandel minces convincingly through a parade of slapstick situations, slathering cold cream on a dowager's jowls, roguishly examining a shapely leg, fawning over the telephone.

— Désiré, the family failure, is a charming fellow who supports his pregnant wife and four small daughters by washing windows for an undertaker and borrowing from brother Alain. He hits on a scheme to enrich himself when the agate-eyed undertaker offers him 60,000 francs to sign a "dying wish," asking Alain to provide him with a de luxe funeral. The undertaker thereupon makes Désiré sick through autosuggestion, and rapidly pushes him to the brink of the de luxe funeral, only to drop dead himself. Désiré recovers instantly and signs himself (and Alain) up for fancy burials with half the morticians of Paris, for the usual advance cash commission.

— Etienne, a raffish, hairy-chested sea captain on a filthy freighter, appears in the film's funniest sequence: after losing all his money and his cargo of sewing machines ("At least that's what the labels say," explains the mate) in a cutthroat poker game with three lugubrious seamen, he offers 1) his ship, and 2) a monumentally configured and barely clothed native girl that he happens to own, in one last, grand gamble. The other players spurn the ship at first, but accept when the dame is offered as collateral. Etienne's bet: a trapped fly will light on his lump of sugar, rather than his opponents'.

— Bernard is a bearded journalist, masquerading as ''Tante Nicole," an advice-to-the-lovelorn columnist, who is a sort of tenderhearted Gallic Mary Haworth.