For the love of God, please don't let the natives of India see Barnyard. The U.S. has enough problems already on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean (or Pacific Ocean, depending on where you reside). The last thing we need right now is for the people of India to see a film where the cows sing karaoke, walk on two legs, and apparently get intoxicated from downing bottles of milk. Sure, all that crap will anger them as the film desecrates their sacred animal, but the image that will have them scrambling to push the Nuke button is of the male cows: they have udders.
Quick lesson, Einstein: male cows don't have udders. If you have a friend that swears he/she has milked a male cow before, throw him/her in a wood-chipper. But hey, it's a movie, right? A film from Nickelodeon, no less. I just need to throw out the facts of life, sit back with my oil tanker full of popcorn (yes, I eat popcorn out of an oil tanker), and enjoy a comedic romp through the wild, and as some would say, crazy barnyard.
Honestly, I would have had more fun throwing myself off a mountain.
If you hate your kids, but haven't reached the point of wanting to bury them alive, then take them to your local theater, tie them to the seats, and force them to spend the last 90 minutes of their lives with the animated crew from Barnyard. Trust me, when the final credits roll, their heads will burst into flames from the sheer stupidity they were subjected to. What's that? You don't have kids? Well, if you need one more reason to commit MySpace suicide, Otis the Cow is your man...uh, cow.
In this stiffly-animated yawn fest, a farmer runs a barnyard where the animals are more than meets the eye (and not in a Transformers kind of way either). Now that I think of it, this film would have rocked ass if a cow transformed into a 40-foot tall robot with a bazooka for an arm and started blasting everything in sight. Instead, the anthropomorphic animals frolic around, dance, sing, and somehow find the time to play a round of golf. The main character, Otis (voiced by Kevin James), is the equivalent of the stereotypical fraternity boy: he's all about living the high life with his friends and scoffs at that mystical word called "work." When his father and leader of the barn, Ben (voiced by certified man's man Sam Elliott), is killed by a vicious pack of coyotes, Otis is looked upon to protect the barn and fill the hoof-shaped boots of his chewed-up Pop.
At the end of the film, Otis saves the day by defeating the coyotes and lives happily ever after. Whoops, guess I spoiled the movie for you. Wait, if you couldn't predict the ending of this movie after reading my synopsis, then maybe it's time to stop huffing spray paint. There's my first problem with this movie: it's the same old shit. If you've seen The Lion King, then you have seen Barnyard. This movie literally follows The Lion King step-by-step: I was hoping that Mustafa would burst onto the scene and start shredding the cows limb from limb, bathing in a pool of bovine blood, but it never happened. If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times: if your film has an unoriginal plot, you need to ensure that it excels in other departments.
Barnyard doesn't excel in much, though. The animation is on par with a full motion video from a Sega Saturn game: half the time, it seems like the animals mouths just move up and down, barely attempting to synch up with the voices. However, I will applaud the animators for their amazing attention (how's that for alliteration?) to the physics of the cow udders: it's the only above-satisfactory animation in the entire film, even if it is a tad exaggerated. They flop and wiggle around with precision, which I must say, can be discomforting for the audience. I'm not even going to go into the physics of the elderly human female in the movie. For you video game geeks out there, let's just say that she would make game developer Tomonobu Itagaki, of Dead or Alive fame, blush. For you non-video game nerds, look up Dead or Alive on Wikipedia.
Word around the office is that this film is supposed to be funny. Guess I missed the memo. The jokes in this film are as stale as the peppermints in your Grandmother's candy bowl. There's a running gag where a ferret tries to control his natural instinct of eating his friend, who happens to be a chicken. Other gags include cows who get drunk off milk, a Mexican mouse that loves African-American inspired cows (I'm not kidding), and cows tipping over sleeping humans. For a film that is supposedly geared towards a young audience, all the jokes are written for an older audience. The problem is that the jokes are so awful and stereotyped, that it causes the older audience in attendance to curl over in pain. Instead of making a film that is suitable for one audience, director Steve Oedekerk and Nickelodeon Movies created a film that is suitable for no one: not even the deaf and blind.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Barnyard proves that to be a false statement. Clunky animation, uninspired jokes, and an unoriginal plot are the diseases plaguing these animals.
This film should have went straight to the slaughterhouse.
"Barnyard" opens August 4, 2006 and is rated PG. Animation, Children & Family, Comedy. Written and directed by Steve Oedekerk. Starring Andie Macdowell, Courteney Cox, Danny Glover, David Koechner, Kevin James, Sam Elliott, Wanda Sykes.
