Psycho's Movie Reviews #368: Barnyard (2006)

Barnyard (marketed as Barnyard: The Original Party Animals) is a 2006 computer-animated comedy film produced by O Entertainment and distributed by Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies. The film is directed, produced, and written by Steve Oedekerk, the co-creator of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius and its television series continuation The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius. The film stars the voices of Kevin James, Courteney Cox, Sam Elliott, Danny Glover, Wanda Sykes, Andie MacDowell, and David Koechner. It tells the story of Otis, a carefree Holstein cow who learns the value of responsibility when he becomes the leader of his farm home's community after his adoptive father's death from a coyote attack.

The film was in development in 2002 and was released on August 4, 2006, in the United States and October 5, 2006, in Germany. It grossed $116.5 million worldwide against a $51 million production budget. It received negative reviews from critics, who described it as "unimaginative and unfunny" and particularly targeted its inaccurate depiction of bulls with udders for criticism. It spawned a television series, titled Back at the Barnyard, which ran on Nickelodeon and later Nicktoons for two seasons.

Plot

Otis is a mischievous, fun-loving and carefree Holstein cow who lives on a local farm and prefers having fun with his best friends — Pip, Freddy, Peck and Pig — rather than following strict rules and accepting responsibility; much to the chagrin and annoyance of his stern and uptight adoptive father and leader of the farm's community, Ben. After Otis interrupts a routine morning roll call and meeting with his usual antics, Ben warns Otis that he will never be happy if he continues without acting more responsible and mature, but he deliberately ignores his father's advice and leaves to do so anyway. That same day, Otis meets a pregnant cow named Daisy, who has moved to the farm with her friend Bessy.

That night after the farmer goes to bed, the animals throw a wild party in the barn that everyone attends, except Ben, who decides to guard the fence line. Otis is assigned a shift along with Ben, but Otis cleverly talks himself out of that work. Before he leaves, Ben tells him that the night he found him as a calf stumbling alone in the meadow, he swore he saw the stars dance, which reminded him that his place was at the farm. Soon after, Ben takes on a pack of evil coyotes who raid the farm's coop and manages to fight off the pack until he is bitten on the leg by their leader Dag, thus making him fall. The coyotes pile on Ben, who manages to grab Dag's leg to escape the pile; using Dag to overpower his followers. He then threatens to punch Dag but lets him go, scaring him and the coyotes away in defeat. Ben then falls to the ground, exhausted and fatally injured. Otis is alerted and he runs outside to his father, who soon dies from his injuries. Early the next morning, Ben's body is buried on the farm's hillside by the farmer and the other animals mourn him once the farmer leaves except for Otis, who is most saddened by the loss of his father and sits at his post.

Following Ben's death, the farm's community elects Otis as their new leader. Otis chooses to irresponsibly shirk his duties by leaving Freddy and Peck in charge of the coop, then with the help of the trouble-making Jersey Cows, teaches a lesson to a mean and overweight youngster nicknamed Snotty Boy for his cow tipping, eluding the authorities afterwards. Later that night, Otis shares a romantic moment with Daisy where she reveals that her husband and the rest of her herd had drowned during a flood, leaving her and Bessy as the only surviving members of the herd. Otis comforts her, but witnesses the coyotes chasing a rabbit and he leaves her to take them on to avenge his father's murder, but is outnumbered. Taking advantage of Otis' lack of strength, Dag proposes a deal: he and his pack will take some of the farm's animals at random times and if Otis tries to do anything about it, they will openly kill them all. Realizing his chances for victory are slim, Otis ultimately decides to leave the farm.

The next morning, before leaving, Otis is informed that the coyotes have kidnapped the hens including Maddy, the daughter of one of them who looks up to him. Otis realizes that Dag doubled-crossed him, knowing that he was not expecting him and the coyotes until nightfall, and sets off to rescue the hens. Otis arrives at the coyotes' junkyard home to fight them off and manages to gain the upper hand, until Dag bites his leg. However, Pip, Pig, Freddy, Peck, Ben's old friend Miles, a colony of gophers who live near the farm and are close friends with Otis and the Jersey Cows arrive to help him. Dag tries to attack Otis from behind, but he is alerted when Peck successfully manages to crow a warning. Otis thwarts Dag's attack and threatens to punch him like Ben did, but warns him to never return to the farm before sending him flying out of the junkyard; finally avenging his father.

On their way home, Pip reveals to Otis that Daisy went into labor after he left. The group then steals a biker gang's motorcycles from a diner and make it back in time to witness Daisy giving birth to a calf that she names Lil' Ben. Otis then takes full responsibility and becomes the new leader of the farm community as he watches the stars of himself, Daisy and Lil' Ben dancing just like Ben said.

The movie ends with one last scene where Mrs. Beady is getting ready for bed, but she finds out that Wild Mike is on top of her head in her hair while looking herself at the mirror in her house.

Release/Reception/Box Office

Barnyard was released in theaters on August 4, 2006 by Paramount Pictures. It was released in Germany two months later on October 5.

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 22% based on 97 reviews, and an average rating of 4.40/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Unimaginative and unfunny, this tale of barnyard mischief borders on 'udder' creepiness and adds little to this summer's repertoire of animated films." On Metacritic, it has a score of 42 out of 100, based on 24 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.

Roger Moore of the Orlando Sentinel gave the film 2 stars out of 5, saying that, "with Barnyard, another quick-and-dirty 'all-star cast' mess churned out by the digital start-ups hired to steal some of Pixar's cash, the year that computer-generated animation 'jumps the shark' becomes official. Politically correct, anatomically incorrect and ugly to look at, the only thing that saves Barnyard is writer (and director) Steve Oedekerk's gift for gags and almost-edgy humour." Kyle Smith of the New York Post gave the film a score of 1.5/4, saying that "if you want to punish your kids, send them to bed without dinner. If you want to disturb, frighten and depress them while making sure they fail biology, take them to the animated feature Barnyard." Gregory Kirschling of Entertainment Weekly criticized the film's plot, giving it a C+ score and said that "it feels like Barnyard swipes too much of its plot from The Lion King."

On the positive side, J. R. Jones of the Chicago Reader enjoyed Barnyard, saying that "it's way funnier than many of the R-rated comedies I've seen lately, though Oedekerk seems to have ignored the writer's edict to know your subject—most of his cows are male. The CGI is excellent, with characters whose depth and solidity suggest Nick Park's clay animations. The laughs subside near the end as the requisite moral kicks in, but this is still that rare kids' movie I'd recommend to parents and non-parents alike." Claudia Puig of USA Today gave the film a score of 2.5/4, calling it "a sweet and mildly funny movie that will entertain young audiences, but one aspect is utterly mystifying: The two main characters, father and son bovine creatures, have large, distracting udders."

Barnyard grossed $72.6 million domestically and $43.9 million internationally for a worldwide total of $116.5 million against its production budget of $51 million.

The film opened at #2 at the box office on its opening weekend behind Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, earning $16 million at the domestic box office from 3,311 theaters. On the film's second weekend, it dropped 38.7%, grossing $9.7 million and finishing in 4th place, behind Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Step Up, and World Trade Center. By its closing on November 2, 2006, it grossed almost $73 million in its domestic theatrical release.

Budget $51 million

Box office $116.5 million

My Review

After I saw the first trailer, I thought that Barnyard looked amusing. I cannot remember when I saw the trailer. I just know that I did not see another one for quite a while. Finally, when the second trailer showed up, everything looked a bit cartoonier, and the movie finally was set to be released. Unfortunately, the amusement looked like it wore off, and it seemed to get lost in a jumble of other animated films released last summer. So after finally checking it out, I have to say that I was a bit more surprised with the film than I thought I would be.

The film is not really all that deep as expected, but it does more of a job with maintaining a plot than other major animated films. And thankfully, the plot does not wear thin after just a few moments only to become preachy or downright boring, much like many of last year's animated offerings. It actually becomes rather sweet in some cases, and really surprised me with how much of a point the film had (the trailers suggested the opposite). Of course, in some cases it rips off The Lion King (which was a kid-friendly version of Hamlet to start), but it is not so blatant that it takes right away from the film.

But unfortunately, the film drags a little to get to its point. It is very padded with the party sequences in the barn, and the likes of the trailer's key "boy tipping" sequence. So when actual plot development takes place, it is offset by something silly that takes over and stays going for a lengthy amount of time. And for that to happen every few minutes in a ninety minute movie, really makes for a bit of an annoyance. Watching part of it again really showed me just how fickle and unsolid some parts were. Yes, it does have its sweetness and its point, but it takes its time getting to it.

What it does not take its time with is some really random scenes that you cannot do anything but laugh during. They get so ridiculous and so obnoxious that crying or really pondering to yourself why the scene is there in the first place is not an option. Their obnoxiousness is just too funny to not laugh. Thankfully, there are some genuinely amusing moments that have nothing too raunchy or bizarre in them too.

The CGI animation is alright, but is nothing to really cheer about. As I said previously, it is very cartoony, and it harks back as more of an ode to the olden style 2D animation of Looney Tunes than it does to the new, highly detailed animation of Happy Feet and Cars. The characters are well drawn and designed, but do not expect to watch and count just how many strands of hair the dog has, or how many individual specks of mud the pig jumps into. The colours however are very vibrant and bright. It looks like they made up for the lack of detail with just how much colour splashes on the screen at any given moment. The animation really is not too jarring or bad, it just is obviously not up to the same level of expertise as other animated projects. It actually looked pretty good for what it is.

Obviously the biggest question to come out of the design of some of these characters is the udders on the male cows. It did not bother me except when they actually showed bulls in the barn (which happens very little), and showed the female cows (they look the same as the males). That kind of threw the effect off for me, joke or not. I would have liked it better if there was a real explanation as to why they had udders, or how the females and males were supposed to be different, other than the fact that females can get pregnant. But overall, unless you are really nit picky about animals being shown anatomically correct, it really should not be all that bothersome. The character of 'Wild Mike' also brings up a few questions, but not enough to really need as large of an exploration as the male cows with udders.

The voices are all pretty well done. James as Otis is very fun loving, and very comical. In some instances though, his voice kind of wavered between tones bizarrely. I think he would have done better not going with all kinds of wacky voices, and just stayed put in one tone. Elliot does a great job with his crackling fatherly voice, and so does Danny Glover with his wise donkey. David Koechner brought some great dark humour to the voice of the head coyote Dag as well. I was not all too impressed by Courteney Cox as Daisy the cow, as she does not sound all too convincing as an animal (she should have taken lessons from Wanda Sykes, but unfortunately, she is too held back in her performance to do much of anything). The lesser known, supporting voices are the ones who actually do the best, but that's come to be expected of people who already do voices to start with.

On the whole, Barnyard is a lot better than it looks. Yes, it is silly, and yes it does drag out, but through it all, there are some good messages and a decent story going on. But you will definitely laugh, that's for sure. 7.3/10

{I'll tell you what though, the soundtrack to this film ain't too bad - especially this one, it's an earworm}

{The best scenes in the film are when Dag, and the rest of the Coyotes, were on screen - at least that's when I found myself paying the most attention... I dunno, I like my villains}