Friday, August 04, 2006

an ugbull movie


I haven't seen the movie Barnyard: The Original Party Animals and I never ever will, but as a blogger I feel that I have the god-given right to pass judgement on it, or at least make inane comments about the movie to nobody in particular.

According to the portions of the reviews I've read, this is the story of some barnyard animals (hence the title) who stand up and start walking and talking like humans. And apparently they're a bunch of rowdy partiers, with all the dancing and the rock and roll and the sex with chickens hijinks. From what I can tell and guess - mostly just guess - one of the bulls grows up and becomes a man mature bull when he learns to put his aside his partying ways and take responsibility for himself and be a barn leader bull person. Maybe he brings out the humanity bovinosity in his evil father after he defeats said father in single combat and then the Regional Agricultural Agent decides to kill him but the evil father kills the Regional Agent because the sight of the young bull being killed moves him to action. What do you think? I sure think so.

Anyway, two things I can't figure out regarding this movie:


1) All the cattle have big pink udders, cows and bulls alike. Why did they do this? It would be like making a movie where all the men had big honking tits and nobody says a thing about it. You know, just casual, the guy's got tits, would you just follow along? There's a tender love scene coming up.

I figure that the writers must have had a conversation like this:

WRITER 1: Okay, so as soon as the farmer drives over the hill, the cows all stand up. Here's the storyboard.
WRITER 2: Hey. Whoah.
WR1: What?
WR2: Aren't those ones supposed to be bulls?
WR1: Yeah.
WR2: So why do the bulls have udders?
WR1: Why wouldn't they?
WR2: Udders are mammary glands.
WR1: Shit.
WR2: Yeah.
WR1: Well we can't have that.
WR2: No.
WR1: So what should they have in place of udders then?
WR2: Well they're bulls, so they would have - they'd have -
WR1: What?
WR2: Ah shit.
WR1: Yeah.
WR2: Let's just leave it smooth then. Nothing there.
WR1: But that would draw too much attention to the cows with the udders.
WR2: Are you kidding?
WR1: We'd look like cow perverts or something. The reviewers would say we had an udder fetish.
WR2: Naah.
WR1: You mean Yes naah.
WR2: What are we going to do? We can't have the bulls walking around with big old scrotums* swinging around.
WR1: Why not?
WR2: What?
WR1: You heard me. Let's push the envelope on this one. Let's make Animated Animal Responsibility Story the most honest goddamn family entertainment ever! Let's -
PRODUCER: Hey, while you guys were in here talking, we finished the film and released it and now it's out and the critics are calling you two a couple of idiots who don't know the difference between a cow and a bull.


2) The enemy of the barnyard in this movie is the coyote. Or coyotes. Whatever. Ben the party bull eventually has to cowboy up and take charge of the barnyard to protect every creature there from the coyote threat. To the best of my knowledge, nobody stops and says "Hey, did you know the farmer's going to kill us all and sell off our butchered bodies part by part? Did you know that the coyote represents a possible threat, but the farmer is our real enemy? Could it be that the coyote is a distraction, a device to keep us occupied while the farmer sharpens his butcher's blade, loads the bolt and readies the hook for our throats?"

Perhaps there are real-world parallels here. Maybe we're in a similar situation, blasting our brains on entertainment while we fear and strike out at the wrong targets, and meanwhile the butcher awaits us all, picking his teeth with his cleaver. Or maybe it's just stuff that's happening and none of it means anything and you should just shut up and take the kids to Barnyard.



*You can tell the characters in my dialogue are writers because they say scrotum in place of 'bovine ballsack' or 'bully wang' or 'alien pudenda' or any of the other things that longshoremen say.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

This slew me. Slayed me. I was slaught. Or something.

Was Mel Gibson involved in this venture at all? It could explain the udders.

blackbird said...

I'm pretty sure that's exactly how it went.

maarmie said...

Can I pass judgment on the way you spelled "judgment?" Or is that a Canadian thing? With the exra -e, that is.

Anonymous said...

Feel free to pass all the judgement you want. It would even be judgmatical of you to do so. My copy of the OED presents both spellings as acceptable, but gives preference to the extra -e. So it's definitely a Brit thing, and therefore probably a Canadian thing as well.

If you're using words like 'judgmatic' or 'judgmatical,' though, you're on solid ground if you eschew that e. I don't think any living human uses those words, but that never stopped me.

Pioneer Woman said...

Ooooo. As the wife of a cattle rancher, I'm thinkin' the udder thing was a really bad move. What's wrong with bull balls? I show photos of them on my blog all the time, and they've already been cut off. No one's taken offense yet.
Thank you for exacting judgment on the film. I don't care that you haven't seen it.

Chris Wilson said...

Cow Porn! Pure unadulterated Cow Porn is what it is! Where is the rating board on this? Thanks for the heads up. Now I won't have to answer all those embarrassing questions that my 4 year old lobs my way after those risque Disney flicks.

sumo said...

I had the same reaction the first time I saw the uddered bulls in the commercial... except I didn't actually come up with the conversation where the writers debate the issue. I am perfectly able to believe that the writers were that clueless about bovine gender issues.