Movie Thoughts: Ferdinand (2017)

• Released: December 15, 2017
  
• Directed by: Carlos Saldanha
• Running time: 1 h 48 min
• Rating 3/5

Synopsis

A gentle bull tries to break his fellow bulls out of having to participate in the devastating bullfights.

My Thoughts

Overall a sweet movie I wasn't overly invested in. Don't get me wrong, it's not bad, but at the same time I didn't have that great a time watching it. It's just decent.

The story is about Ferdinand, a gentle giant of a bull who never wanted to be a fighter and grew up on a girl's farm being very loved. When he ends up at a farm that breeds bulls for bullfighting due to circumstances, he is determined to both get back to the girl he loves and also break out his new (and old) friends at the farm, to save them from having to participate in the fights and being killed. 

A sweet story and it does have its sweet moments, which I mostly what made me give it a 3 and not a 2.5 out of 5. The relationship between Ferdinand and his main girl is sweet, and I like how despite everything Ferdinand will not budge on his gentle stance. Everyone is constantly trying rile him up and encourage him to become a fierce fighter like his father before him. It's not like Ferdinand doesn't have the potential to be dangerous, he absolutely does with how huge and muscular he is. But his gentle personality always shines through. 

When he ends up back at the bullfighting farm where he was born, he pretty quickly manages to befriend the other bulls there (sans one or two) and shows them that there is more to life than fighting and dying in the bullring. They can have fun, they can be friends, there is more to life than being tough and mean all the time. Heck, even when Ferdinand does have the ability to run away and go back to his girl, he instead chooses to free the other bulls from the farm, which eventually leads to him actually having to fight in the ring. And even here, where he's pretty much about to be killed, he refuses to use violence against the matador and instead just sits down in front of him. That was a powerful emotional moment.

The animation was also pretty good and I liked most of the character designs.

However, for all these good elements and the genuine-ness that Ferdinand's character has, there's also some lesser elements in the movie. I didn't like the main matador antagonist, he was pretty bland. The other bulls are mostly one-note characters except for Valiente, who actually goes through an arc here. Lupe the goat, while I love her character design, can be really annoying, and she's a major element in the film so she does overstay her welcome. And the horses are...well, the horses. 

 

They're inbred ballet-dancing German nincompoops and while I get that they were there for comic relief and giving the bulls some antagonists to work against other than humans, they were so obnoxious and just...not funny. Like, they serve their purpose in the story fine but are just too annoying to the point it made me want to turn off the film. When the rest of the movie does have its decent moments.

 

I also spotted a small logical issue. In the prologue of the movie, we see that Ferdinand already has his name when he is at the bull farm. Later, he runs away and is found and taken in by the girl and her father on their farm. But they somehow still know that his name is Ferdinand, which feels inconsistent. Mind you, he has no ear tag or collar on or anything, so how they know what his name is, is beyond me. If I'd written the movie, I'd have given him a very though-sounding name in the prologue, but then once he gets adopted by the girl and she names him Ferdinand, he likes that more gentle-sounding name more and accepts it because it was given to him by someone who loves him for who and what he is. It would've prevented this weird small plot hole and also played into the theme of this movie of Ferdinand sticking to his principles rather than trying to be someone he is not.

Overall I liked this movie, but I don't think I'll be watching it again. The heartfelt moments were neat and I liked the animation and character designs, but there are just one too many obnoxious characters for me and the movie didn't have enough to really stand out for me personally. I am still glad I finally watched it, though.