I've said it before and I'll say it again: if there's an animated movie out and Pixar doesn't have a hand in it, then it's just not going to be very good (with the possible exception of some Dreamworks fare). This has stood true for nearly ten years now and has claimed even the mighty Disney Corp. along the way. Barnyard, Paramount's attempt to enter what is a very lucrative market, falls along the wayside due to a sad deficit of CGI brilliance, effective plotting and humour. Gentleman (and ladies, presumably), you need more than a big splash of colour and some talking animals to make a good movie. While the film racked up a respectable $72 million in the US thats a drop in the ocean compared to what Pixar has made on Finding Nemo ($340 million), The Incredibles ($260 million) and Cars ($245 million) in the last 3 years alone. While I'd hate to simply equate money made to excellence, these numbers speak for themselves.
The deficiencies in Barnyard are clear from the off. While I love Kevin James in The King of Queens he's miscast here as the fun-loving, work-shirking Otis. He just doesn't have the carefree spirit needed to bring the character to life, or the sense of learned responsibility needed to pull him out of trouble. The rest of the cast, with the possible exception of Danny Glover as the wise but violent mule Miles, are also pretty weak. I didn't even know it was Cox doing the voice of Daisy, and Wanda Sykes vocal 'talents' have already been seen in exactly the same manner in Over the Hedge. With one half of the necessary on-screen showing already fatally hamstrung it required a pretty big push in plotting, writing and CGI to make Barnyard a good family movie.
Yeah, that doesn't happen either. It's not that the animation is bad (certainly not as bad as Hoodwinked for example), you just get the feeling that you've been there and seen that.The animals don't quite move right and the humans haven't even been attempted really. Short and squat, it's almost as if the designers gave up on the challenge early and just caricatured them right then and there. The plot is also fairly dull, with Otis' father Ben, the leader of the barnyard, killed by coyote's and the useless Otis elected to step into his place. His failings and eventual rise to his responsibilities has been done a thousand times over this year alone, and it just left a sense of yawnation in the adults present. Speaking of which, I don't think I heard much of a peep from the wee one's present either. Barnyard is barely competent for either adults or kids, and that's a sad thing to say about an animated family movie. |
