Battle of the Barn is a frantic mess, but kind of fun

Is this thing worth a watch?

Honestly, only if you have a soft spot for the really frantic, old-school Columbia shorts. If you're into the weird history of Scrappy and that specific era of animation where everyone is constantly yelling and flailing, you'll dig it. If you find high-pitched squealing and relentless slapstick annoying? You’ll probably want to claw your eyes out after about thirty seconds. 🚜

It’s a loud, bouncy little war. The whole thing is basically one long brawl in a barn, which feels like a fever dream of slapstick gags stacked on top of each other. Dick Huemer knew how to keep the energy up, even if it feels like he drank a gallon of espresso before writing this one.

The Rhythm of the Chaos

There’s this moment where a hen gets launched into a pile of hay, and the timing is just... perfectly frantic. You don’t get that kind of loose, rubbery movement in modern stuff anymore. Everything today is so calculated and clean, but here, things just sort of snap into place whenever the animator felt like it. It’s messy, but it works.

I found myself zoning out a bit during the mid-section, though. It starts to feel like they just kept adding more animals to the frame just to fill space. It’s not quite as tight as Horse Sense, which had a bit more of a focused story arc, if you can call it that. This one is just pure, unadulterated noise.

Odd Little Details

• The way the barn door swings open at the start looks suspiciously like a background asset from another project.
• I’m pretty sure one of the cows has three different voices in a single minute.
• The sound design is basically just a guy hitting a piece of metal with a wooden spoon for five minutes straight.

It’s not as ambitious as something like The Belle of Kenosha, which had that weird, lingering melancholy. This is just pure, dumb fun. It doesn't want to be a masterpiece. It just wants to throw a chicken at a rival gang and see what sticks.

You can tell they were trying to punch up the stakes, but the stakes are literally just a barn. It’s hard to care about the outcome of the battle, but you care about the gags. Sometimes, that’s enough. 🐔