Back from a self-imposed hiatus after a somewhat tumultuous last quarter of 2017, I’m restarting the blog with a quick rundown of the retelling of a classic Disney animation, Ferdinand. And boy, is this bull against all kinds of bull(crap.)
Curiously, 20th Century Fox produced the animation, and we know by now that a mega deal is tucking all the Fox titles under the vast Disney universe. Back to the bull pen, Ferdinand.
Anyway, the story is about a peaceable bull Ferdinand (John Cena) which refuses to fight and avoids any notion of violence, opting instead to spend his happy days playing with his owner Nina (Lily Day) or smelling the flowers under his favorite tree on the hill.
His idyllic life takes a rough turn when he rampages though town after sitting on a bumblebee. Ferdinand is caught and sent to the bull keep to be trained to fight, where all other bulls bully at him for not choosing to fight. But he does meet new friends, and with their help, Ferdinand hatches a plan to escape the bull farm and return to Nina, if only it would not involve facing the matador in Madrid.
It’s a safe, somewhat unremarkable but often entertaining adaptation of the classic Disney animation which was adapted from the childrens book The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf, published in 1936. The book was such a popular hit, its story would take on vatious political meanings during the Second World War and was expectedly banned during the regime of Franco in Spain.
I barely have a beef against the movie (haha, the pun) except that manic chase in the last act that just reverts the entire film back to current pedestrian animated feature territory. It was doing well as an animated family feature that shared ideas about loving oneself and not giving in to peer pressure or outright braving up against bullying – but then it still went through that manic chase to the finish that’s pretty much standard fare in many US animated films.
For the first hour, Ferdinand fascinates with its pacifism and deliberate pace quite against Hollywood tropes of heroism, forging into battle and saving the day. There are no forced adult elements like embezzlement, psychotropic drugs or racism (hello, Zootopia) – altough the spectre of death looms over the bulls’ heads quite repeatedly. The film also dodges the ethics of Spanish bullfighting – a tricky subject, although the source material did come from the US.
And then the inevitable action-packed ending happens, where the furry posse manages to drive a vehicle from their farm to the city, whizzing through Madrid’s narrow alleys before landing in the ring. I mean, c’mon.
The animation is so-so – but I do like the colorful pallette. No eye-popping realistic fur or complex cloth textures. For a film set in Spain, the movie has just a few Spanish elements – perhaps to make the story more univerally appealing? That doesn’t make sense in a Google Map world. John Cena’s voice sounds appropriately robust for Ferdinand’s mighty form, but Kate McKinnon steals the show by giving the rough and asthmatic goat Lupe an excitable throat. Music is okay.
Overall, Ferdinand is a safe, pet-friendly though very pedestrian animation from Fox. IF they make a sequel, I may not mind for as long as they keep it pure and simple – just like Ferdinand.
You can watch the 1938 animated classic here:
acid reflects 
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