Ferdinand (2017)

Blue Sky Studios, once said to be #3 among CG movie studios, shut down for good today. I was not aware of this scheduled event or the company's 2019 purchase by Disney when I chose to watch its penultimate production yesterday. I just thought it was one of the more promising Academy nominees for Best Animated Feature that I hadn't seen yet. Its basis in a classic children's book I hadn't read tempted me too.

As a calf, Ferdinand lives on a Spanish ranch that raises bulls specifically for the lethal kind of bullfight. Not only does he not like the prospect of getting stabbed to death; he doesn't like fighting at all. He escapes to a farm, where a loving girl and her father take such good care of him that he grows especially big in adulthood (and is then voiced by John Cena). Alas, he's not smart enough to keep out of town, where his oafishness is widely mistaken for berserkness, so he gets taken back to his old haunts, now with a good chance of being picked to face El Primero (Miguel Ángel Silvestre), a matador who's no Manolo.

That summary may sound very simple to you, but it's still more than the Netflix jacket had to say. And the story is still less simple than in the Munro Leaf and Robert Lawson book, The Story of Ferdinand. Indeed, the added complexity produces a plot hole that many IMDb users agree is a big deal: Ferdinand's new owners call him by the same name despite having no way to know it. Yeah, it's one of those flicks where the audience hears animal talk but the human characters hear animal noises.

Those folks notwithstanding, the majority of the many new characters are played for laughs. The other bulls (including one voiced by Peyton Manning) conform much better to the imposed ideal of belligerence, but they have their idiosyncrasies; only Valiente (Bobby Canavale), the outright bully, is fully serious. Ferdinand's canine "brother" (Jerrod Carmichael) tends to act annoyed with him but can't avoid a telltale tail wag. Lupe the goat (Kate McKinnon), who considers it her duty to help Ferdinand one way or another, is perhaps the hammiest goofball, sometimes coughing up whatever object the situation demands. A trio of thieving hedgehog siblings (Gina Rodriguez, Daveed Diggs, and Gabriel Iglesias) will help for a price, preferably if you don't misidentify them. And the German horses next door (Flula Borg, Boris Kodjoe, and Sally Phillips) live to strut their stuff and mock the less graceful.

I suspect that the main reason for middling ratings is that the humor isn't great. Blue Sky seems to combine a DreamWorks attitude with the zippy movements of Columbia Pictures animations, which feels dopier than average despite little vulgarity. While not as ludicrous as later Ice Age entries, Ferdinand pushes the bounds of physics and biology (e.g., impossible colorations) just enough to merit a fantasy tag on IMDb, so I obliged as well. Once in a while, we get a choice line, but the Highland bull (David Tennant) saying, "Put that in your kilt and smoke it," doesn't make much sense.

Accents are an issue, to be sure. Apart from the mockery of Scots and Germans, which is more tiresome than offensive, I'm concerned about the scarcity of Spanish accents in a setting that the makers tried so hard to make look like Spain, complete with snippets of Spanish text. The animals may have the same excuse as the rats in Ratatouille, but too few of the ostensibly native humans don't sound American.

Another possible downside is the dubious balance between comedy and drama. Ferdinand keeps fearing for the lives of himself and others; from his perspective, there's not much to laugh at. Even as we approach the climax, the action sequences are largely antics. When things finally slow down for emotional intensity, it's potentially jarring.

On the plus side, I consider this one of the cuter talking animal pictures of late. You wouldn't think so when the focus is on hulking brutes and there isn't a spark of romance anywhere, but that may actually help to avoid a cloying quality. And Lupe, while ugly and unpopular, is clearly banking on goats' recent upsurge in online attention.

In the end, the real star is, of course, the titular toro himself. He brings the attributes that made the book a hit in the first place. He cares about everyone, no matter how adversarial. He almost never shows a trace of anger, and when he does, he gets it under control fast. If any quadruped can make a good role model for us, he can. Dang, now I kinda wish I could adopt him.

One sign that I enjoyed the movie overall: I checked out all the DVD extras. There are quite a few, some made for kids and other more with adults in mind.

Ferdinand didn't stand a chance against Coco, but I do think it was worthy of the top five for the year. Better than a couple threequels, anyway. I find it about average for Blue Sky, and I'm content to let that be my final viewing of the studio's fare.