Gutsycurene
Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.
Suman Roberson
It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.
Lucia Ayala
It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.
OllieSuave-007
Ferdinand is a bull that likes to sit under a tree in the forest and smell the flowers. He doesn't hang with the other bulls and chooses to be by himself, perfectly content with his independence. When he was taken into a bull arena to fight a matador, he does not engage in the battle and, instead, smell the flowers that were tossed from the crowd.A great story - reminds you that you can be perfectly content with the simplest things in life and you don't need to be part of the in-crowd or have materialist things to be happy. You can also be carefree and release yourself of any distractions in life.Grade A
MartinHafer
This is one of my favorite stories from childhood and this Disney cartoon did a wonderful job of capturing the spirit of the classic Muro Leaf story. The 1939 Oscars were a particularly good year, with Disney receiving 4 of 5 nominations in the category of Best Cartoon and receiving the award for FERDINAND--beating out such Disney classics as THE BRAVE LITTLE TAILOR and GOOD SCOUTS.The film is about a gentle bull in Spain who has no interest in fighting. Instead, he'd rather just sit and smell the flowers all day. However, when men come looking for fierce bulls for the bullfighting ring, they think Ferdinand is the meanest bull because he was just stung by a bee. What happens next you'll need to see for yourself.There is a lot to like about this cartoon. The artwork, though not exactly in the style of the children's book, is pretty close and is among the better animated shorts Disney did in the era. If you compare the artwork, music and quality to fare from Fleischer, Warner Brothers and MGM at the same time, it is light-years ahead. The best cartoons at that time were clearly Disney--with MGM and Warner Brothers still making saccharine-sweet cartoons with second-rate animation until the 1940s (when these two studios became the best maker of cartoon shorts). This film just screams "quality" throughout and deserved the Oscar.By the way, get a load of the Cork Tree! Ha!
Leslie Howard Adams
From a two-page trade-paper ad on November 2, 1938: "WALT DISNEY'S Production of FERDINAND THE BULL. Never in all motion picture history have any but the most important feature attractions been given such nation-wide plugging!...Stories, articles, art and pictorial layouts, editorials and fashion announcements in magazines whose NET PAID CIRCULATIONS TOTAL 15, 542, 945! Look at the list already committed: LIFE...PHOTOPLAY...CUE...SCREEN GUIDE...VOGUE...MICKEY MOUSE MAGAZINE...LOOK...McCALLS...HARPER'S BAZAAR...STAGE...YOUNG America...MOVIE LIFE...LIBERTY...WOMAN'S DAY...MOVIE STORY...THEATRE ARTS...SCHOLASTIC...ROCKEFELLER CENTER WEEKLY.Add to this a total of sixty-four licensees signed up for one hundred and two separate articles of merchandise. Big window displays everywhere. Big fashion parades in department stores. A PROMOTIONAL CAMPAIGN THAT CAN BE COMPARED ONLY WITH SNOW WHITE.'" THANKSGIVING WEEK ATTRACTION AT LEADING FIRST RUNS EVERYWHERE.NEXT Disney RELEASES * MERBABIES -Release Date, December 9 * MOTHER GOOSE GOES Hollywood - Release Date, December 23 Mr. Disney knew how to go to market.
Robert Reynolds
Disney has had a reputation (in large part, justifiably so) for taking literary works and making them overly cute, thereby not doing justice to the source (i.e., Bambi), but here do a wonderful job of bringing Ferdinand off the printed page and into glorious, moving color! This is one of the best shorts Disney ever did and took the Oscar for 1938, beating three other Disney shorts (including a Mickey Mouse) and a Paramount cartoon called Hunky and Spunky. With remarkable backgrounds and detail, even for a Disney cartoon, this really should be in-print. It does show on The Ink and Paint Club. Most joyously recommended!
