Barnyard movie review - Aussieboyreviews
WILL YOUNG AGES AND UP HAVE FUN WITH THE PARTYING IN BARNYARD?
Most will be distracted by the awful GCI animation, sound syncing, and the exhausted humour. But if your child is new to movies and other filmography, Barnyard will place a nostalgic root in their hearts. This is just touching entertainment for kids.
Storyline
Otis is a carefree cow among the rest of the barnyard animals who all like to dance, party and play when the farmer is away. But when his father is suddenly killed by coyotes, Otis must step up and take responsibility for protecting all of his buddies.
Movie Images
Movie details
Director: Steve Oedekerk
Cast: Kevin James, Courteney Cox, Sam Elliott, Danny Glover, Wanda Sykes, Andie MacDowell, David Koechner, Cam Clarke, Tino Insana
Writer: Steve Oedekerk
Release Date (Australia): 21 September 2006
Runtime: 90 minutes/1h 30m
Genre: Animation, Comedy, Family
Country: USA, Germany
Language: English
CONTENT GUIDE (warning: May contain spoilers)
The film contains mild instances of crude humour and includes multiple scenes featuring a sense of threat and menace, as well as a birth sequence. There are also themes relating to death and loss throughout.
The film contains animated scenes of violence between animal characters, including biting, fighting, and hitting with objects.
The word “hell” is used within the lyrics of a song.
The film contains a brief verbal reference to “bringing the stuff”.
There are comedic animated depictions of upper buttocks nudity.
None.
mpaa rating
PG (for some mild peril and rude humor)
Aussie boy's thoughts
Plain and simple, Barnyard is just pure entertainment and surprisingly touching fun for young children, whilst teens and adults who watched it as one of their first ever movies will also be delighted, but find heaps of nostalgia and memories in it as well. But the film isn’t great animation for its time and age. It’ll probably very quite difficult for any audiences older than primary school-aged children to watch it without being bothered by its major flaws and plot holes, but this is a movie where you have to focus on the fun and the overall values of the film.
As an animated comedy featuring talking livestock who party all day whilst a carefree cow must take responsibility after his father, Barnyard does its job with an abundance of kiddie jokes, an entertainingly bizarre alignment of silly situations, and the voices we hear from the cast are plausible enough. The themes and some of the big plot points feel quite similar to The Lion King, including the lead character starting to take responsibility after the heartbreaking death of a family member, whilst he must also deal with grief. Barnyard is touching and the humour will appeal to little kids.
It’s not like the vision throughout the entire film is blurry or hard to make sense of, as you can see everything that’s going on, but there are a few details where the computer-worked animation just brings a whole mess that could be avoided with more effort. A lot of the time, the sound effects and voices sync terribly with the characters’ mouths or the banging of drums. You don’t even have to be the most strict film critic to just be bothered by this issue. Also, it’s “udderly” ridiculous that the male cows have udders. During a lot of scenes, the humour is too dumb to be enjoyable and it’s occasionally just forced in places in which no dialogue or attempted jokes would be better. After The Lion King and Toy Story, it’s definitely not the most original, either. But if you’re just looking for a movie that doesn’t take itself too seriously and you can ignore its weaknesses, it’s fairly watchable and it’s not a complete disaster zone.
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