Ferdinand

photo courtesy of redcarpetcrash.com

SPOILER-FREE REVIEW

     From the studio that brought you the Ice Age series comes Ferdinand, an animated kid’s feature based on the 1936 children’s book The Story of Ferdinand. It’s the story of a friendly bull named Ferdinand (John Cena), whose peaceful frame of mind butts up against Spain’s bullfighting culture. When Ferdinand gets captured by a bullfighting trainer, he enlists his friends Lupe the calming goat (Kate McKinnon), a trio of hedgehogs (Gina Rodriguez, Daveed Diggs, and Gabriel Iglesias), and several fellow bulls (Bobby Cannavale, Anthony Anderson, Petyon Manning, David Tennant) to help him escape the bullfighting arena and get back to his rightful owner, Nina (Lily Day).

     Ferdinand means well, but its good intentions aren’t enough to keep it afloat. Animated kid’s movies about animals who talk come out every other weekend these days, so to stand out from the crowd you’ve got to bring something exceptional to the table. Ferdinand sits comfortably just underneath that bar: mildly entertaining for a casual, one-time viewing… but otherwise unmemorable.  

photo courtesy of animationmagazine.net

     It’s sort of a shame, considering the famous source material. The movie’s at its most meaningful when it draws directly from the book, relating nice (and unsubtle) themes about nonviolence and sacrifice. Those kinds of themes are refreshing in an animated movie landscape where most films settle for “be yourself” or else just distract the audience with butt jokes for an hour and a half. But because themes by themselves can’t fill a 107-minute runtime, Ferdinand relies on cheap comedic relief or cliché escapades to fill in the slow spots.

     And there are quite a few slow spots. For every engaging sequence, there’s another that feels rote. Unfortunately, Ferdinand just can’t generate enough interest in its main characters to make the audience invest in the outcome of their misadventures.

photo courtesy of regmovies.com

      Humor, which should be a pretty pivotal ingredient for a movie like Ferdinand, is surprisingly hard to come by. Sure, there are a few good laughs and an abundance of so-so ones, but with the likes of Kate McKinnon and Gabriel Iglesias on board, it’s not wrong to expect quite a bit more. Ferdinand’s poorly written dialogue never does them justice.

     FINAL VERDICT: In a December packed with plenty of exciting new releases, Ferdinand is one you and your kids don’t need to worry about missing.

Watch the trailer here. 

photo courtesy of twitter.com