Review

Ferdinand

Ferdinand (voice of John Cena) is a peaceful bovine who finds himself facing some difficult choices in Carlos Saldanha’s animated treatment of the classic Munro Leaf children’s story Ferdinand.
Ferdinand (voice of John Cena) is a peaceful bovine who finds himself facing some difficult choices in Carlos Saldanha’s animated treatment of the classic Munro Leaf children’s story Ferdinand.

Sometimes the strongest individuals are the ones who resist the urge to fight. That was the message of Munro Leaf's 1936 delightful children's classic Ferdinand, where a large, fearsome bull prefers sniffing flowers to butting his heads with other cattle in the pen.

It takes less than 10 minutes to read, but Brazilian animation director Carlos Saldanha (Rio) manages to stretch out the short tale without weakening the title character's noble heart. In fact, the film runs nearly twice as long as the time it allegedly took Leaf to write the book. (A Disney cartoon was made in 1938.)

Ferdinand

86 Cast: Voices of John Cena, Kate McKinnon, David Tennant, Gina Rodriguez, Bobby Cannavale, Anthony Anderson, Peyton Manning, Miguel Angel Silvestre, Lily Day, Gabriel Iglesias

Director: Carlos Saldanha

Rating: PG, for rude humor, action and some thematic elements

Running time: 1 hour, 46 minutes

Good voice casting doesn't hurt. Former wrestler John Cena's deep, resonant drawl sounds like it could come from a bull's mouth. He also has enough of a range so that he convincingly portray a critter with conflicted emotions. A lot of live action stories don't ask actors to dig that deeply.

In the case of Ferdinand (Cena), he'd rather sit at the top of the hill instead of practicing for the chance to take out a matador. Perhaps avoiding all the bullplay (as opposed to horseplay), has allowed his brain to develop further than his peers. Ferdinand begins to wonder if the ring is such a great place to attain glory. He and other others may not know it yet, but in the areas of Madrid, bulls meet the same destiny as if they had rode the van to the chophouse instead of the stadium.

Rejecting either option, Ferdinand escapes from the ranch and is rescued by a florist and his affectionate daughter Nina (Lilly Day). Instead of preening in front of matadors, hoping for a chance to show them up, Ferdinand and a dog named Paco (Jerrod Carmichael) help the florist raise the flowers for market. Ferdinand grows to enormous size because he has built up his muscles watering plants with troughs that are big enough to feed an army of pigs.

Sadly, he's far too large to make it as a house pet and instead gets mistaken for a fearsome monster when he stumbles into Nina's village. Despite his gentle demeanor, his gigantic proportions cause him to accidentally tear up much of the town. Saldanha manages to generate several chuckles when Ferdinand struggles his way through an actual china shop. He's just agile enough to think he could get through it without damaging the merchandise.

We know better.

He winds up being returned to the ranch and still has trouble explaining that his refusal to tussle with other bulls is a sign of neither cowardice nor weakness. Gradually, he helps his peers get through their challenges instead of trying to pound them into submission. For example, the Scottish bull Angus (David Tennant, who actually is from Braveheart country) stumbles around until Ferdinand brushes his mane away from his eyes.

Before his eventual showdown with the famous matador El Primero (Miguel Angel Silvestre), Ferdinand encounters a variety of other animals, some of whom are more interesting than others.

Some self-important German horses are pretty amusing, but a trio of hedgehogs barely register. Kate McKinnon is expectedly hilarious as a "calming goat" named Lupe who winds up irritating the bulls instead of relaxing them.

Some of the action scenes seem like time killers, and it's pointless to speculate what Leaf would think of the movie (he died in 1976). Nonetheless, Saldanha manages to address some tricky subjects for a children's movie.

The young bulls learn that their beloved fathers didn't triumph over the matadors, and the decision over whether to fight at all perplexes adults. (Incidentally, if you think Leaf might have been a lily-livered peacenik, think again. He and Dr. Seuss helped made propaganda films during World War II.)

Saldanha knows children will eventually have to make the same difficult choices their parents have. It's an achievement that he has delightfully managed to address that fact with the help of a gentle, friendly bull.

MovieStyle on 12/15/2017

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