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August 04, 2006
Barnyard
(out of four)
Just about anyone can make an animated movie these days. Case in point: Barnyard, the loud, sophomoric and stunningly crude (both in visual quality and content) new computer-generated cartoon from writer/director Steve Oedekerk, mastermind behind Patch Adams and the Ace Ventura sequel.
Animators everywhere should take Barnyard as a call to action. If Oedekerk can do it, so can they, and while there's no guarantee they could do it better, they'd be hard-pressed to fare much worse. Not all of Oedekerk's credits are as insufferable as those collaborations with Tom Shadyac. He also co-wrote Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius with director John A. Davis, who demonstrated a week ago that you don't need Pixar-caliber visuals to tell a good animated story in The Ant Bully. Cutting-edge CGI never hurts, but a little creativity goes a long way.
Barnyard has exactly one good idea, that farm animals behave differently when humans aren't looking, and it manages to spin that into the most abrasive full-length movie imaginable. You see, when these "party animals" get to talking, they never shut up, especially Otis (Kevin James), the bullheaded son of top cow Ben (Sam Elliott).
The way Oedekerk conceives the secret life of animals, as soon as the farmer goes to work — doing what we can only imagine, since the man is a declared vegan who is never seen collecting eggs, milking cows or otherwise tending his livestock — the critters cut loose to hold committee meetings and other such exciting things. Only Otis seems to have much fun, mocking the mailman and surfing down hillsides on a board purchased from the gopher "underground."
Would a plot really have been too much to ask? The best Barnyard can muster are a few tired echoes of The Lion King, what with sinister coyotes circling the barn and the irresponsible Otis eventually needing to step up to take Ben's place in the circle of life, or some such, along with a dead-end romantic subplot involving a heifer (Courteney Cox) who arrives with baby on board.
Given the hot-topic spotlight on agriculture cast by Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, the movie might have used the arena as an opportunity to comment on the changing face of farming. Instead, it's just a backdrop for lumpy characters with bubble-gummy features, some of whom are so poorly designed, you can't even distinguished what animal they represent.
The Los Angeles-born Oedekerk can't have spent much time on the farm in his life, perhaps a field trip in second grade. This deficiency is made clear by the fact that both male and female cows have udders in his world — you can tell the females apart by the bows in their hair. As stylistic decisions go, it's ultimately no worse than giving all his animals googly eyes and opposable thumbs, but those unsightly udders are likely to be the one detail audiences remember about the movie 10 years from now.
[as featured in The Miami Herald]
Posted by Peter Debruge on