2018 Film Review: Ferdinand (2017)

Directed by: Carlos Saldanha
Written by: Ron Burch, David Kidd, Don Rhymer, Robert L. Baird, Tim Federle, Brad Copeland
Starring: John Cena, Kate McKinnon, Bobby Cannavale
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The story is simple: we follow Ferdinand, a big bull who doesn't want to be a part of the bull-fighting life, who gets captured and taken to a bull house to be shown to a matador.

The film goes as you'd expect, with Ferdinand using his tenet of non-violence to change the hearts and minds of everyone he meets along the way, in the process helping to end the culture surrounding bull-fighting and the mistreatment of cattle. It's sweet, and heartwarming, and leaves lots of time for Ferdinand to just be a swell guy that slowly but surely turns things around. Unfortunately, the film's writing doesn't really let it try and be more than that.

That's essentially the only key issue with the film; the writing is overloaded with unnecessary fluff that doesn't add anything to the story or tells us what we already know. The film opens with Ferdinand as a child at the bull house, running away when his father doesn't come home, before finding a home at a farm with a lovely little girl and her father, only to be taken back to the bull house ten movie minutes later. The inclusion of the scenes with the father does very little for the story, and its specific placement in the story creates a hard emotional whiplash. The film cuts out a lot from its third act sequences, with the editing becoming noticeably terrible at points, because for some reason it needed to included an extended dance-off sequence between all of the bulls and a trio of fey German horses. Several characters that are included don't really do anything for the movie; the hedgehogs are cute, but the movie doesn't gain anything by having three of them. None of this is offensive or even particularly off-putting, they're just indicative of the fact that the film's writing was fighting to stretch itself out to nearly two hours while still keeping focus on its primary themes.

The rest of the film is just fine, decent even. Cena and McKinnon do good work in their voice roles, and the animation is fluid with its own distinct art style reminiscent of Blue Sky's other work like Ice Age. None of it stands out as particularly amazing, and the best of what the film does is all fairly familiar if you've seen an animated film before; it's all competent, but nothing amazing.

The Short Version: Ferdinand tugs at the heartstrings, but is so full of fluff and tired cliches, and struggles to mix the meaningful with the surreal in a meaningful way. It's inoffensive fun with a nice anti-violence message, but little more than that.

Rating: 6/10

January 19th, 2018