Barnyard (film)

For the 1923 film, see The Barnyard (1923 film).

Barnyard
File:Barnyard poster.jpg
Directed by	Steve Oedekerk
Written by	Steve Oedekerk
Produced by	Steve Oedekerk
Starring	Kevin James Jeff Garcia Tino Insana Courteney Cox Arquette Cam Clarke Rob Paulsen Sam Elliott Danny Glover Andie MacDowell Wanda Sykes Dom Irrera Maria Bamford Steve Oedekerk
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures Nick Movies
Running time	Approx. 83 minutes
Language	English
Budget	$51 million

Until the spinoff Back at the Barnyard that a first one was being Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius

Plot

While some characters in the film are humans, most are anthropomorphic animals which in the presence of humans pretend to be ordinary animals. In particular, when no humans are around they walk on two legs, and talk; much like Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie and The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: A VeggieTales Movie.

The film opens with Otis (Kevin James), a "male cow" (see below), climbing on a surfboard with a block of ice underneath it on a hill with four of his friends: Peck (Rob Paulsen), the rooster who can't crow; Pip (Jeff Garcia) the mouse, Otis's best friend; Pig (Tino Insana), the perpetually hungry pig; and Freddy (Cam Clarke), a ferret constantly battling the desire to eat Peck or the other chickens. Otis and friends fly down the mountain and eventually crash into a chicken farm. They land in the barn for a meeting being held by his adoptive father and barnyard leader, Ben the cow (Sam Elliott). Though obviously irritated by Otis's late arrival, Ben continues the meeting.

After the meeting, Ben lectures Otis on the younger cow's irresponsibility-- the cell phone call during the meeting and Otis's laid-back nature in general. The elder cow tells his son to grow up, saying that he will never be happy if he spends all his time goofing off. When Otis begins to gripe about his night watch shift, Ben tells him that, "A strong man stands up for himself. A stronger man stands up for others."

After a day spent goofing around with friends and meeting Bessy and Daisy, two new female cows, one of whom Otis develops a crush on, Otis talks Ben out of his guard shift in order to attend a party in the barn. Later that night, a pack of coyotes led by Dag (David Koechner) sneak into the barnyard and raid the chicken coop. Ben fights them off, but collapses after the altercation. Etta the chicken (Andie MacDowell) rushes to the barn house party and tells Otis about Ben. Otis rushes out of the barn and finds Ben, wounded, lying on the ground. He looks at Otis, as if to say something, but then passes away.

After Ben's death, Otis is elected to be the new farm leader. However, he still lacks maturity in his new position resulting in being caught in a daytime party by the farmer, who is immediately knocked out and positioned to think he was simply watching a video for Minnesota Cuke and the Search for Sampson's Hairbrush at the homebarn, and was hit on the head by a door opens that had broke off the homebarn. Otis also leads the rebellious Jersey cows in stealing the neighbor's car to get revenge on a cow-tipping boy.

While patrolling for coyotes, Otis confronts the pack, but is easily defeated. Dag and his gang tell Otis that they will be back the next day to take all of the chickens, and that Otis should just let them. However, the coyotes trick Otis the following day, kidnapping a bunch of chickens in broad daylight while Otis is preoccupied about leaving the farm. To make up for his mistake, Otis sets off to confront the coyotes again. He is defeated again, but his friends eventually show up and help him to send the pack fleeing. After the battle, Otis and company return to the farm where Daisy the cow gives birth to a calf she names Ben and the film ends.

Cast

Actor	Animal	Name
Kevin James	Male bull	Otis
S. Scott Bullock	Male bull	Eddy
Courteney Cox Arquette	Female cow	Daisy
Sam Elliott	Male bull	Ben
Danny Glover	Male donkey	Miles
Andie MacDowell	Hen chicken	Etta
Wanda Sykes	Female cow	Bessy
Jeff Garcia	Male mouse	Pip
Rob Paulsen	Rooster, male gopher, and pizza delivery boy	Peck/Gopher/Pizza Guy
Cam Clarke	Male ferret	Freddy
Tino Insana	Male hog	Pig
Dom Irrera	Male sheepdog	Duke
David Koechner	Male coyote	Dag
Madeline Lovejoy	Female chick	Maddy
Maurice LaMarche	Male bull	Igg
John DiMaggio	Male bull	Budd
Maria Bamford	Human	Mrs. Beady
Fred Tatasciore	Human	Farmer
Steve Oedekerk	Human boy/Human male adult/Various animals	Eugene Beady (aka Snotty Boy) /Mr. Beady/Additional animals
Megan Cavanaugh	Hen	Hannah
Nathaniel Martin Stroman	Rooster	Root

• Barn Boys: North Mississippi Allstars
• Snotty Boy's Friends: Katie Leigh, Laraine Newman
• Chicks: Eliana Bendetson, Paul Butcher, Khamani Griffin, Arlo Levin, Liliana Mumy, Cindy Neal, Georgia Van Newkirk, Cate Ozawa, Anna Pistor, Thomas Pistor, Isaiah Tefilo

Production

Technical info

Complex scenes in Barnyard were rendered using 64-bit computers from Sun Microsystems, based on a 620-computer render farm, including Sun Fire x64 servers. [1] It was Nickelodeon's most technically challenging animated film, which included vast landscapes with realistic rendering and lighting, as well as complex scenes with over 200 characters.

The switch from a Dell/Microsoft Windows render farm to a Sun/Linux render farm occurred midway in the production [2], when the schedules began to slip and the management recognized that the horsepower based on 32-bit hardware was insufficient so that the release date had to be rescheduled to autumn. With Sun's solution, the release was shifted back to summertime.

Over 180 characters were rigged for animation [3] with rigs being capable of two and four leg stances and walk cycles, squash and stretch, procedural secondary animation of flesh and hair, and motion capture from Omation's 22-camera Vicon mocap stage.

The key software applications running on Sun servers, for rendering purposes, included Avid Technology's Softimage XSI animation software, Mental Ray rendering software, and Eyeon's Digital Fusion digital compositing software.

Reception

It grossed $16 million its opening weekend, and made $73 million in its domestic theatrical release. It has made $108 million in its worldwide theatrical release.

The film has a 24% rating at rottentomatoes.com, but has a number of advocates, including Michael Medved, who gave Barnyard four stars (out of four) calling it "hilarious, thrilling" and "flat out one of the year's best films."[4].

"Male cow"

In the real world a male bovine is called a bull or a steer and does not have an udder. However, in this film several characters are "male cows" with an udder. There is also a different character who is a bull, so the creators really must have thought cows and bulls are separate animals. While the director said he did this for fun many commentators considered it an error, and/or found it irritating. Some reviewers jokingly referred to the film as a bovine Transamerica. This is, however, not the first time cattle have been portrayed in this way. In the United Kingdom, Boddington's Ale featured an animated "male cow" in some of its 1990s advertising, and recent computer animated adverts for Anchor butter portray two "male cows" as having udders. Also, the Dairylea adverts in the UK have male cows with udders. A more recent advert portrays that they really are male because they all have male voices.