Customer Reviews

Barnyard - The Original Party Animals (Full Screen Edition)

5 star:		(45)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(21)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(18)

 

 

When the farmer is away, the animals will play. In fact, when the farmer is away, the animals stand on two legs, walk, and talk. One of those animals, Otis the cow (James), is a prankster who does as little as possible and enjoys life. Otis's day, Ben (Elliott), is the animal that keeps the farm running smoothly. He is their leader, and he takes this position seriously. Try as he might, he is unable to talk Otis into getting serious about life. He wants Otis to lead the farm when he is gone, but Otis wants none of that. Soon, when Ben is unable to lead, and Otis does not step up, the coyotes begin to think that the farm could be theirs for the taking.

"Barnyard" is about as middle of the road in quality as a kids' movie can be. It does some things right and provides some laughs, but it also does a lot of things wrong. Most disturbing are the male "cows". Even kids know that males should not have udders, and it is a bit disconcerting to hear Sam Elliott's voice come out of a cow. The story is not too original, with echoes of "The Lion King", and not all the jokes work. On the positive side, it does offer up a good moral of responsibility, and young kids will find it more funny than adults. This is a forgettable entry into 2006's animated movies, and will be forgotten within a year.

At first the animation seems interesting and unique, but after a while it starts to seem a bit amateurish and rushed, as does the plot and the character development. It's not all that surprising, considering that the writer/director is Steve Oedenkirk, creator of much Hollywood Schlock. I'm not going into detail on his career, IMDB it, and you'll find the only quality film he's made is Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, and the quality of that is questionable to some.

The celebrity voice-over has become somewhat of a fad in recent animated film creations, although it's constantly been proven that celebrity voices don't necessarily equal box-office draw, and they definitely don't equal quality cartoon time. Barnyard is no exception.

The overall story is a subpar Lion King-esque ripoff with Sam Elliot as the patriarch of the barnyard and Kevin James as the young partying cow who doesn't take life seriously. Now follow the Lion King story, but replace Lions with cows, the prideland with a barnyard, and hyenas with coyotes. There you go, you've got this film.

There are some funny parts, and a good deal of heart and family friendly lessons to be learned, but much of the father/son story drags on and gets so intense that it will leave kids bored and probably not register with them. Other things are just random and unfunny.

Overall, this animated film feels vaguely familiar. Another studio rushing to put out a star-powered animation that families will flock to, only to find that it's not as easy a genre as Pixar makes it out to be. If you skip an animated film this year, skip this one.

Nice animations. Nothing original in this movie, though. The plot lacks so much originality that the creators cannot think of any other way to make their movie funny except copying the action-violence theme from the old cheap movies with real life actors. (Haven't these guys seen Madagascar, Ice age, cars, etc. etc., for a good hint of how animators can be creative AND funny?) The social behavior displayed in the movie is terrible. Bulling is a central piece and makes up for most of the intended jokes. Add to that the the super-macho heroes steal a car and motorcycles, speed, and fool the police (and get away with it) while mimicking drinking & driving. Last, but not least, scriptwriters and characters make fun of a woman with a mental disease in a pretty sad way. I know many movies do it, and some are good enough to do it respectfully... but the creators of Barnyard are just not that good. There are many other good children movies out there... I wasted my money with this one.

Neither I nor my son enjoyed this one. Over The Hedge- Cute, entertaining movie. This- Even when you get past the bulls with udders, I thought that there were a lot of elements of this film that weren't appropriate for children under 10. There were some cool jokes and sparse pieces of snappy writing- Sam Elliot singing Tom Petty was fun, but the animation of the few people in the movie and the coyotes was a little dark and ugly for my kid. I felt like I watched two movies- one was the Nick TV show, the other a kind of stark coming of age flick. The animation style seemed to change depending on which part of the script you were in- it just seemed choppy. Both concepts on their own were decently done (except for the bulls with udders), but there was enough questionable content that I won't be owning this one or even watching it again.

Barnyard - The Original Party Animals (Widescreen Edition)~ Voice of Kevin James is an o.k. animated movie but I expected more from it. I read in other reviews that the director thought it would be funny for all cows to have udders, but to me this was so distracting and I kept like thinking about this the whole movie. The story line is a complete copy of The Lion King. The music is what saves this movie. The movie also seems a bit long and I kept like looking at my watch to see if it had stopped. The jokes are sometimes funny but many times they miss the point. Still and all the movie is not all bad but I must say that I was quite disappointed and yes I had expected more, but maybe this was my mistake;).

Like many of the other critics, the good fun in this movie is a bit overshadowed by the "guy cows with udders". Of course, I do have to agree that real bulls standing up would have been just as, if not more, objectionable......! It is still a very funny movie but parents, don't be surprised when your kid, upon seeing a cow - with udders - in the field, ask you "Is it a mama cow or a daddy cow?

My heart sank when I saw the Nickelodeon logo at the beginning of this movie, and my fears were confirmed. Seeing the promo (after the movie) for a Barnyard TV series this fall only confirmed what I already knew. Barnyard was just a TV pilot released to the theaters. And it has all the problems of the usual kiddy TV show: everything is medium instead of well done, with maudlin segments to try to jerk tears, and lessons taught so heavy-handedly that I expected to see the E/I tag in the corner of the screen. Overall, the best way to describe this movie is TV bland.

I did note that while the story was similar to The Lion King--main character comes back from his lazy wastrel lifestyle to inexplicably have the ability to save the day--there was more of an attempt at character development in Barnyard. But not enough to make me care.

I thought it was funny that, when Barnyard was released, half the world carried on about the fact that the bulls had udders. Steve Oedekirk's answer to that was, udders are funny. And that, combined with the skillful editing for the movie's trailers, had me thinking the movie would be funny. It wasn't, really.

I think a better observation about the bulls would be, why don't the bulls have horns? To keep the Christian fundamentalists from asserting that there is a demonic element to them? You have to think of such things when you're designing a TV show.

I don't hate this movie--I'm not that emotionally invested in it. There's nothing in it to care about. I probably would have been better off spending 90 minutes channel surfing--I might have stumbled across something interesting. But the deleted scenes on the DVD show that Barnyard could have been much worse than it is.

Apart from borrowing liberally from the basic premise of the Lion King (an orphaned cow goes from party animal to protector, that even includes a pivotal scene when the father paints the child's destiny in the stars), this film attempts to be about fathers and sons, but the filmmakers appear to have been uneasy with a literal depiction of male bovines (i.e. bulls). So they compromised by making even the males into cows (they even called themselves cows), complete with udders and absent other distinguishing marks of the bull. Not only that, but they carefully (but awkwardly) avoid almost any reference to male sexuality. That's why I don't buy the explanation (of one of the "Spotlight Reviews") that the filmmakers simply "hadn't done their research" (it doesn't take much research to know that male mammals of almost any species don't have prominent mammaries, but usually do have other prominent parts) -- the film deliberately and systematically avoids the issues that the filmmakers were uncomfortable with depicting. Otis's father, Ben, "found him" in a pasture one day. Ben himself becomes a father when his friend (there is no romance so it's difficult to call her his girlfriend), gives birth. They do say that she was once married, in an obvious effort to avoid suggestions that the child is "illegitimate," but imply without stating it directly that her former husband died in a storm. But there are no details. Ben has a heart to heart chat with her, but never asks about her husband. There is no hint that Otis's father Ben was ever married, and there is no indication of any other "married" animals or of any love or affection or sexual tension between any of the animals (with the bizarre exception of Otis's best friend a rat, who has the hots for a cow). In fact, the only marriage actually depicted in the film is a disfunctional and uncommunicative marriage between the farmer and his wife -- he, a couch potato who almost completely ignores her, and she, a neurotic who admits to taking medication for a chemical imbalance (not that there is anything wrong with that -- but it is a strange subject to bring up in a film that is ostensibly for very young children and that avoids other adult issues -- in fact, that was the one question my young son asked me during the film: "what did she mean when she said she had a chemical imbalance?").

It is a strange film, that has the feel of a plot that was developed before any thought was given as to how animated bulls would actually be depicted or of how marriage or the question where child animals come from in a story about fatherhood. Then, I would guess, they did some market research and realized that to be any less vague or inaccurate about such things would have alienated part of their core audience (worried that families with large children will tend to be conservative or would just prefer not to have to answer awkward questions from their children). I guess the big problem comes from the fact that if you are going to have cows walking upright they are going to display their gender -- the same problem never came up in films like "The Lion King" (but that film didn't have a problem conveying gender differences in hairstyle and stature). I suppose it's probably a stretch to think the filmmakers actually wanted to make their film a gender-bending depiction of same-sex marriages in which the "male" and "female" are simply roles adopted by same-gendered cows -- or transgendered cows, since I guess they could have been intending us to think of them as steers (i.e. sterilized bulls, but they don't have prominent udders either). What is bizarre is that the filmmakers are making a film for children, and trust that the children will be interested in matters that impact adults, but at the same time treat the children as utterly (udderly?) naive.

I'm not exactly sure how it would have been best to depict gender in this film, but am convinced there is a better way than blatantly false depictions. For a refreshing film that is frank about gender difference (and also happens to be a wonderful and unique film, that is well worth watching) without making a big deal about it (treating it as the natural thing it in fact is) take a look at the Japanese animated film Pom Poko, in which male raccoons prominently display their "pouches" and where intimacy between animals is dealt with in a way that is both sensitive (and in no way offensive or graphic) and tender. Even Bambi (another wonderful film) is a great example of how to address such issues sensitively without needing to resort to bizarre evasions in the way that this film does.

If what you want is a moderately entertaining animated film that will capture the attention of small children for a couple of hours, I guess you could do worse than this one. (That was largely my aim in renting it, and my kids laughed a few times, and seemed to like it a little -- though unlike some films they weren't clamoring to watch it again the next day.) It has a few funny moments, and a "feel good" message about taking responsibility. For my part, though, I find myself increasingly put off by the whole process of "filmmaking by committee" that appears to dominate much of the more recent films for children put out by Hollywood. Too many of these films treat the audience as stupid rather than finding a way to intelligently deal with sensitive subjects in an age appropriate fashion and without giving offense.

One joke (the animals act human when the humans aren't around) is not enough to sustain a whole movie without a plot. I watched it for at least a half hour before I fell asleep (not exactly a ringing endorsement), and I can't recall the story. My 11-year-old switched it off soon after, saying, "I'm bored."

Anthropomorphisation is only funny to a certain extent and when an animal's original character is preserved. In this movie, you see some mutants that you can't even guess what they are (neither from their appearance nor from their behavior). A good animated movie about animal life (e.g. Over The Hedge, Ice Age, etc.) involves thorough observation of fauna prior to attempts of recreating it on screen. Poor, poor plot line.