Ferdinand Review

You may have heard the news, but last weekend there was a small movie released from a 40-year-old franchise that was so divisive that I'm pretty sure there is now a huge mob of fans on the way to Rian Johnson's house wherein half of the mob is prepared to burn his house down whereas the other half is prepared to worship him as their new savior. Regardless of where you stand in regards to "The Last Jedi," what you may not have actually realized was that there was another movie released at the exact same time called "Ferdinand." Now you may be wondering why in the heck Blue Sky would choose to release their latest animated film at the same time as a Star Wars movie, but this is actually a strategy that has worked out well in the past. Just last year Illumination released their animated movie "Sing" at the same time as "Rogue One" and "Sing" ended up making around $270 million domestically, which ended up being more than "Moana" did after being released a month earlier on a "safer" Thanksgiving release date. So it's not a bad idea to attempt some counter-programming. And even though opening weekend didn't work out quite like Blue Sky was hoping for, this has the chance to play well through the holidays with no new family movies until Paddington 2 in January.

"Ferdinand" is about a young lion named Simba who runs away from home after his father dies. After living a peaceful life away from his former home, certain circumstances cause him to be thrown back to his original home where has to face the past and deal with a dangerous situation that has come up. Oh wait. Wrong movie. "Ferdinand" is actually about a young boy named Miguel who comes from a family of shoemakers. Miguel, however, doesn't want to be a shoemaker. He wants to be a musician. But in his family, being a musician is looked down upon, so he goes on a crazy journey that sends him to the land of the dead wherein his motivations are to prove his family wrong and become a musician anyways. Oh dang it. That's also the wrong movie. This is not "The Lion King" or "Coco." This is "Ferdinand." The movie about the bull who would rather smell flowers than bullfight. Based on the 1930's kids book that was adapted into the 1938 animated short that won Disney an Oscar in that category. Blue Sky has decided to take that short story and expand it into a feature length animated film wherein Ferdinand goes on a whole bunch of different adventures with different animals and people while still keeping intact the outline of the original story.

In doing so, "Ferdinand" ends up becoming a movie that you've probably seen a thousand times before. It has a painfully unoriginal premise with painfully unoriginal themes. If you watched the trailers, you can make a guess as to what's going to happen in this movie and you're going to feel like a psychic afterwards because you'll be exactly right. Even if you didn't seen any trailers or you aren't aware of the original book or animated short before watching this movie, you'll see the opening scene with a bunch of bulls training for bullfighting while Ferdinand is taking care of his flowers and then you can map out in your mind where this is going and you'll also be right on. The movie tries to throw in some crazy twists and turns, but it ends up being a lot less clever and smart than it thinks it is. As I pointed out earlier, the plot structure ends up being very similar to "The Lion King" when they expanded from eight minutes to 108 minutes. And even though "The Lion King" is fantastic, they didn't exactly invent that structure either as they're modeled after Shakespeare's "Hamlet." And an animated movie teaching kids that they can be different than what's expected of them? Yeah, I've never seen that before in my life. Hashtag sarcasm. Hashtag Coco.

But do you know what? I've been so mean to animated movies this year that I'm going to give this one a break. I mean, I've completely trashed so many of these animated movies such as "The Boss Baby," "Cars 3," "Despicable Me 3," "The Emoji Movie" and "The Star" that I could potentially have my top 10 worst movies of the year list full of these disappointing animated movies. When I reflect on this whole situation, even though "Ferdinand" is no where close to the likes of "The LEGO Batman Movie" or "Coco" and probably isn't quite on the level of "Captain Underpants" either, I found myself enjoying "Ferdinand" a lot more than I thought I would and thus I would say it's easily better than all those previously mentioned animated movies that I trashed on this year. John Cena is the voice of Ferdinand and I felt that fit rather well. Yes, John Cena is a bodybuilder and a WWE superstar, but I feel like he's the type of guy who, when he's at home with friends or family, wouldn't actually harm a fly and is more of a big giant teddy bear who would rather sniff flowers than hurt someone. So I thought he was extremely charming and lovable as Ferdinand and I genuinely wanted him to get back to sniffing flowers all day long with his young girl owner.

There's also a lot of other talented voice work in the mix here that made this an enjoyable ride. The best of which is definitely Kate McKinnon, voicing a crazy goat. Kate McKinnon is a really talented comedian on SNL as well as all these other movies she's been showing up in after "Ghostbusters" made her more of a household name and this whole movie I felt like she just had a blast in the recording booth. We also have our team of bulls voiced by Bobby Cannavale, Anthony Anderson, Peyton Manning and David Tennant. Yeah, you heard that right. Peyton Manning is in this movie. You thought he was going back to the NFL in some form as a coach, a GM or an owner? Maybe he has a career in voice acting ahead of him. Those other three around him make for a fun team of bulls all with very different personalities. Then we have a trio of mischievous hedgehogs voiced by Gina Rodriguez, Daveed Diggs and Gabriel Iglesias that are quite hilarious and a trio of horses next to the bulls voiced by Flula Borg, Sally Phillips and Boris Kodjoe that steal the show every time they show up, which includes a rather hilarious dance-off between the bulls and horses that comes out of nowhere, but should make everyone in the theater bust up laughing.

All of this comes together in a rather enjoyable fashion that should do a great job of pleasing its target audience, that being younger kids. I always try to pay close attention to how the kids are reacting when I go into a kids movie. When push comes to shove, it doesn't matter what any grumpy, old adult thinks about a kids movie. If the kids enjoyed it, the movie did its job. Luckily there were plenty of kids in the theater with me and I honestly think they had the time of their lives. The movie has a lot of gags from the bulls, hedgehogs and horses that are geared towards making kids laughed and it worked. The kids laughed quite a bit and I joined them during several of these scenes. The movie also has a finale that's very similar to "Finding Dory" that'll probably make the parents facepalm at how ridiculous it gets, but again the sequence should be very enjoyable for kids. Yes, there's always the argument that an animated movie has the ability to be like Pixar by pleasing the kids AND the adults, but sometimes you can tell that a studio set out to simply make a fun, harmless kids movie and if they succeed in doing so, then I have no problem with that. With this being Blue Sky, the team that did all the "Ice Age" movies, that seems to be their main focus.

Do you need to rush out and see this movie right away? No. There's so many other movies in theaters right now that this is one you can skip over and you won't miss anything. I'd say it's probably a middle of the pack movie for Blue Sky. They're a studio that occasionally comes up with something that's worth seeing for all audiences, such as the first "Ice Age" movie, "Horton Hears a Who" or "The Peanuts Movie." Yet for the most part they stay on the safe side of things by delivering movies that are harmless fun for the younger crowd while not spending much effort at all going outside the box to create something special. I haven't seen anything particularly bad from them, although I admittedly skipped the third, fourth and fifth "Ice Age" movies, but they aren't a studio that blows me away. Thus I use the word "safe." "Ferdinand" is another safe movie from Blue Sky. If you've already seen "Coco" or "Wonder" this season and you want another family movie trip for you and your kids and they're too young for "The Last Jedi" and "Jumanji," then "Ferdinand" is a solid choice. Your younger kids aged 3-6 will probably love this movie. But if you don't feel like spending the money, you're totally fine in waiting for the DVD or Netflix this time around. My grade for "Ferdinand" is a 7/10.