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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Barnyard, September 12, 2006
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.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Barnyard lacks substance and (for the most part) humor, April 8, 2007
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.
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20 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Are the filmmakers timid, stupid or intentionally subversive? Bulls with udders, parenting without any hint of intimacy, December 14, 2006
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.
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