I have had a fickle relationship with movies in my lifetime. I grew up in a very small town, didn't have much money, and my mom didn't believe in movies so I saw only a couple while I was growing up. Once I hit late high school and college, I saw a lot of movies. Saw quite a few through my early 30s in fact. Then, having a kid sort of takes away from that for awhile. Now, I do see movies once in awhile. Most of them are animated which isn't all bad.

We went to see "Barnyard" last night. It was pretty much all bad. The graphics were great -- incredible, in fact -- but the storyline was lame. I read where someone said it was a knock-off of The Lion King. I never saw that but their argument made sense to me.

Barnyard is one of those cartoons that doesn't know whether it's for adults or children and it doesn't do a good job of reaching either audience. There was almost no audible laughter from the audience -- never a good sign.

When I saw previews for this movie, I thought it was maybe going to have Gary Larsen's involvement. That seems to be far from the fact though.

The movie is taking a lot of heat for having boy cows with udders. Ya know, odd as that is, I can live with it I guess. It is sort of funny ... I guess.

Aside from that, though, it has a lot of really bad stuff in it ... admittedly, it involves cows but things like underage drinking and drinking while driving are plentiful. It also has graphic scenes of violence that made me concerned that I would have nightmares, let alone young children. There were several really inappropriate references, too -- things that probably went over kids' heads but still were inappropriate. There was a pretty non sequiter message supporting adoption which was neat though.

Okay, I hate playing critic because who am I to criticize? I just really didn't care for the movie though.

There were a couple of Leadership 101 quotes in it, though, which I will post here just as a way to keep track of them.

"A strong man stands up for himself; a stronger man stands up for others."

"The best leader isn't the biggest leader or the strongest. The best leader is the one who cares the most."

And, there was a really cool epitaph:

"Ben A Good Cow"