Surprisingly not that awful

I was a 4th grader when this came out and I despised it. I hated anything having to do with this movie. I remember our elementary school book run had Barnyard merchandise and posters everywhere, and my friends and I stole one of the posters and performed a poorly done autopsy on Otis's face with a pair of scissors before promptly returning it to its original spot on a wall in the 4th grade hallway. My parents rented the film once it came to home media and I hated it as much as I thought I would. Lame jokes, half the voice cast of Jimmy Neutron, and stupid cows and pigs as the main characters. Being the cool kids we were, nobody wanted to see it and if you did, you didn't admit it.

But...I saw it again last night because my girlfriend was flipping through Netflix and had a nostalgic "OMG let's watch *insert nostalgic animated film here*!!!" when she saw Barnyard. After seeing it a full decade later, I can honestly admit that it wasnt as insufferable as I remembered. The biggest issue is, easily, the animation, which truly is awful. I think college students could probably perform at higher levels than the animation completed for this film. The entire time I watched it, I felt like I was watching test footage, not a $60 million dollar wide theatrical release. Otherwise, I didn't mind the film. Although the story was very thin and cliche, I felt like a lot of the jokes actually hit their mark quite well, and I didn't remember the frequency of jokes that the film really has; it's literally about 1 joke every 5 seconds (mostly visual gags), and most of them are decent. The entire sequence with the grand theft auto and police chase was borderline hilarious. Even Kevin James wasn't as bad as he usually is. Hell, it's probably his best role ever.

It's maybe a 5/10. Several flaws in the story and characters, as well as awful animation, but it's overall not insufferable.