Review – The Barnyard

Yeesh, what a dreadful experience. For starters, this is the biggest disconnect I’ve ever seen between the content of a movie and the studio’s description of the content of a movie. The box under the MPAA rating for this thing warns us of “some mild peril and rude humor.” In the first few minutes the protagonist’s father is murdered on-screen by vicious coyotes. The villains go on to threaten and/or attempt to kill every other animal in the movie. Paramount should know that this goes considerably beyond “mild peril,” but of course putting words such as “violence” or “terror” on the box would likely have cut into sales and rentals of a kiddie flick. If that had been the only problem, I could probably have extended some slack on the rating. But it gets worse. Nickelodeon Movies appears to be jockeying for the position of “Pixar Cheap” with efforts like this. The animation is terrible, not much better than current generation video game graphics. The cast is mostly has-beens and never-will-bes. Even the music sucks. A lot of it is off-the-rack, and the “original” performances tend to be things like a cow doing an acoustic version of an old Tom Petty tune. Still, I think the thing that sticks with me most is an odd bit of annoyance: all the bovines in this movie – male and female alike – have udders. Somebody here needs to get out of the big city every once in awhile. Wish I’d skipped it