Today, there was an animated movie that premiered in Indonesia. I was a bit surprised that this movie would be premiering on the same day as in the US since we were already shown Star Wars: The Last Jedi earlier. In any case, it is our gain as we are not too far behind like in other previous new movies. My wife and I utilized our final vouchers that we acquire from my credit card (which would expire in less than 2 weeks time). So we were quite happy to see the movie for free 😀. Anyway, let us get on with the movie.
Brief Story Line
A very big bull named Ferdinand (voiced by WWE wrestler John Cena - Daddy's Home 2, Trainwreck etc) was having a nice life with a girl that loved and adored him named Nina (Lily Day). He was a gentle kind-hearted bull who unlike other bulls did not enjoy violence and loved flowers. One day, due to some reasons, he was separated from Nina and ended up at the place he despised the most, where he would meet with other bulls who had been trained to fight matadors all their lives.
Ferdinand's only friend was a goat named Lupe (Kate McKinnon - 2016 version Ghostbusters, Masterminds etc) who was very persistent in helping him. Meanwhile Valiante (Bobby Cannavale - Ant-Man, Boardwalk Empire TV series etc) only saw him as a competition and disliked him a lot. Other bulls in that place were a skinny bull called Bones (Anthony Anderson - Kangaroo Jack, Transformers etc), a Scottish bull named Angus (David Tennant - Jessica Jones TV series etc), a stressful bull named Guapo (Peyton Manning) and a straight faced bull named Maquina (Tim Nordquist). They all had only 1 goal in life which was to become a bull chosen to fight Matador in Madrid. Ferdinand also met with 3 hedgehogs named Una, Dos and Cuatro respectively, plus 3 snobbish horses named Hans, Klaus and Greta.
Ferdinand really wanted to leave the place and return to his home with Nina. But was there any way for him to do so? What would happen later? Find them all in this family fun 3D animated movie.
End of Brief Story Line
So this movie was about a bull who had to make a bold choice in his life. The story was not very heavy and quite easy to understand but there was a major moral message in the movie where anybody could and should be anyone they wanted to be even if it was of different nature. This film was rather light and gave us some laughters combined with brief emotional moment. Despite starting off rather slow, but from the middle onward, Ferdinand's character would grow on you. It was fun to see a very very big bull who would be scary to all people but loved to smell flowers.
In an era of more serious & heavy animated movie especially those from Disney and Pixar such as Coco, this movie brought some freshness and I believed would be much easier to understand by children. That is why I think this movie would relate better with children. When we saw this movie, there were quite a lot young children as well and they were able to laugh on most of the funny scenes. This is understandable since the movie was based on a children's book titled The Story of Ferdinand with some modification and dramatic addition to the movie. The timing of this movie to be shown was definitely to give alternative for families who wanted to show their children good time in the theater as opposed to the Star Wars movie.
The movie was very very colorful and the animation was actually pretty good and beautiful. It was no doubt due to produced by Blue Sky Studios which produced other hit animated movies such as Ice Age series, Rio and The Peanuts Movie. This one was a nice movie where you could enjoy fun times and few touching moments, specifically the climax where my wife was quite emotional. Although it was rather light, apparently this film was good enough to be nominated for 75th Golden Globe's Best animated movie. There was also a nice song played in the end credit scene titled Home by Nick Jonas which happened to be nominated for Best original song. Oh, there was a brief quite funny moment in the middle of end credit scene. My most favorite scene was the one involving Ferdinand in a house full of cups, plates and other ceramics which was quite fun.
So if you are looking for a fun light hearted movie, easy enough to understand for whole ages, then this one could certainly be an option, especially if the children are already on holiday. One thing that audience have to remember is that this is not up to the caliber of those Disney/Pixar movies so there is no need to compare with those movies. You can just go, enjoy the colorful scenes and be happy seeing such an extraordinary bull.
Happy watching!
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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