Barnyard The Original Party Animals

On a farm where the animals walk upright when the farmer isn’t looking, the head cow (voice by Sam Elliott) worries that his son (Kevin James) is too irresponsible to take over as leader when the time comes. Writer-director Steve Oedekerk tries his hand at an animated feature, with about the results you’d expect from the man who gave us Patch Adams and Kung Pow: sloppy and dull, with no story to speak of and no emotional or even comic energy. Oedekerk never bothers to explain why a supposedly vegan farmer has animals in the first place, and he either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that cows are—ahem—female. (Really now, would you hang around a barnyard with someone who couldn’t tell bulls from cows?) The chintzy animation isn’t even up to the level the Pixar gang reached 20 years ago.