I didn't think this was going to be any good but I was pleasantly surprised. I remember watching the old Ferdinand short from Disney and I seriously wondered how they were going to stretch 20 minutes of material into two hours. Turns out, they do it by making the movie about fighting toxic masculinity instead of pacifism. Ferdinand (John Cena) ran away from bullfighting training as a calf and ended up on a flower farm with Nina (Lily Day), a little girl who loved and cared for him, where he grew up to be the biggest bull for miles. So big that Nina's dad (Juanes) told Nina that she can no longer bring Ferdinand to the annual flower festival in town. Ferdinand decides to go anyway and is accidentally stung by a bee. Maddened, he wrecks the flower festival and is carted off by animal control, who turn around and sell him back to the bullfighting house where he grew up. He makes some new friends in Lupe (Kate McKinnon), the calming goat, and Una (Gina Rodriguez), Dos (Daveed Diggs), and Cuatro (Gabriel Iglesias), three hedgehogs, but the other bulls are not as welcoming. Things reach a boiling point when El Primero (Miguel Ángel Silvestre), the most famous matador, arrives to choose a bull for his final fight.
I was really impressed with how the movie handled this subject matter. It addressed the glorification of violence, the pressure to conform, and the negative stigma of expressing feelings in a thoughtful way that didn't come off as heavy-handed or preachy. The musical numbers were uninspired and seemed extraneous but Kate McKinnon was hilarious and I love David Tennant in everything. He plays a Scottish bull and it is completely adorable. And my three godchildren liked it so it plays well to its target demographic.
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