Back in 2002 Manchester United paid a British record fee of £30 million to Leeds United for a blond haired man mountain called Rio, who would go on (in my opinion) to become a club legend. Ferdinand is a documentary about the life and career of Rio Ferdinand; and a look forward at his ambition to someday enter the squared circle as a boxer.
As much as I enjoyed ‘The Class of ‘92’, this is unfortunately not another documentary about a former Manchester United player. Ferdinand is actually an animated movie based upon a very successful children’s book; and is about a bull called Ferdinand (John Cena, ’12 Rounds’) who would rather spend his days smelling flowers than fighting.
I haven’t read the book which the film is based upon; however on seeing the movie, I think I can understand why the book would be such a success. The central concept of having a bull that would rather smell flowers than fight isn’t a bad idea for a kid’s story as it promotes a sweet message. That said, I don’t think that concept alone was enough to warrant a full length movie.
Being the second leg of my double bill with ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’, I was in a good mood at the beginning of this film and prepared to go along with it and hope for the best. I thought it started off well and following the Golden Globe nominated song ‘Home’, I was thinking this was actually rather enjoyable. Unfortunately however the film struggled to go anywhere unique and on the whole left me rather underwhelmed.
There were some things I liked, mainly the supporting characters. There were 3 German show horses in the field next to the bulls and these horses would act like they were superior to the bulls. At one point there was even a dance off between the horses and the bulls, which although completely unoriginal, did make me smile. There was also a joke involving 3 hedgehogs and Spanish numbers, which I chuckled at. The most creative (although overly extended) joke was a sketch literally involving a bull in a china shop. These as well as some of the action scenes did keep my attention, but only just.
As well as Cena, I thought there was a pretty good supporting voice cast which included: David Tennant (Dr Who), Bobby Cannavale (Spy), Anthony Anderson (Black-ish) and former NFL quarterback Payton Manning.
The worst character in the film was a goat called Lupe, voiced by Kate McKinnon (Ghostbusters, 2016). Hands down she was one of the most annoying characters in cinema I’ve seen all year. She was sort of a sidekick to Ferdinand, but everything about her bugged me, from the way she spoke to the stupid things she’d say. She was like some sort of cross between the characters of Dory (Finding Dory) and Mater (Cars). She almost single-handedly turned this ok movie into a bad one.
I think the reason why I was most disappointed with Ferdinand is that, on the whole, it was pretty bland and forgettable. It wasn’t a terrible film by any stretch; but when you see the quality of some of the animated movies being released nowadays, this felt extremely formulaic. As I’ve come to learn, the Golden Globes are a joke that nobody should take seriously; however the fact that this got nominated in the best animation category ahead of the excellent ‘Cars 3’ does slightly annoy and baffle me.
If you’re looking for a nice family film to watch with the kids then you can do a lot worse than Ferdinand. It’s a fine movie with a nice message. However, I think we all deserves better. Films like ‘Inside Out’ prove that great animated movies are still being made; and just because it’s a kid’s film, that doesn’t mean that it can’t also be intelligent. Personally I think turning Ferdinand into feature length movie was a bad idea. At most it should have been a short film, the type of which you get before Pixar movies.
