They headbutt and tussle to be chosen by the matador El Primero (Miguel Ángel Silvestre), but Ferdinand is the odds-on favorite due to his hulking size and clumsiness that masquerades as ferociousness. He ends up at the home of a flower farmer and is taken in by his daughter, Nina (voiced by Lily Day), and girl and beast grow up together in perfect harmony.īut Ferdinand (John Cena) becomes too large and unruly for his own good, and after wreaking havoc on a flower festival he’s shipped back to the ranch, where he’s reunited with his childhood friends.

The young and gentle bull flees his ranch after his father is chosen for a bullfight and never returns. To flesh out the story of Ferdinand to feature length, the team of writers has given the protagonist a dramatic upbringing.

The peaceful spirit of Ferdinand is celebrated in the film, directed by Carlos Saldanha, but the rather sparse story has been filled out with the typical animated feature fare of manic action, a coterie of wise-cracking animals, body humor, dead parents, car chases, dance-offs and pop music. (Disney won an Oscar for its eight-minute 1938 short, “Ferdinand the Bull.”) It’s natural that this favorite character would eventually find a home on the big screen in an animated feature, “Ferdinand,” but perhaps the filmmakers behind the raucous “Ice Age” movies aren’t exactly the right team to adapt this elegant story to the screen. But the simple, pacifist story about a bull who would rather smell flowers than fight has resonated across generations. The beloved children’s book “The Story of Ferdinand” by Munro Leaf, with illustrations by Robert Lawson, was published in 1936.

The story of ferdinand 1936