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Barnyard (also marketed as Barnyard: The Original Party Animals) is a 2006 Nickelodeon animated comedy film produced by O Entertainment (who also produced Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius), and starring the voices of Kevin James, Courteney Cox, Sam Elliott, Danny Glover, Wanda Sykes, Andie MacDowell and David Koechner.

Otis is a party animal cow, one of many barnyard animals who hide their walking and talking lifestyle from humanity. Ben, the leader of the barn and Otis' father, is constantly assuring his son that he'll have to shape up and improve his attitude one day. Sure enough, one night of irresponsibility leads to Ben's death at the hands of the evil coyote Dag and his pack. With Otis elected as the new leader, he must look out for all the other animals and struggle with accepting responsibility for others, all while coping with the developing feelings he has for the newest addition to the barnyard, Daisy, a pregnant cow.

The film served as the Pilot Movie for Back at the Barnyard, which premiered the following year.

You gotta trope:

• Actor Allusion: Sam Elliott plays Ben, the "Sheriff" of the Barnyard, as a tribute to his roles as authority figures in numerous Westerns. Appropriate, since this movie is in itself something of a Western, but with cows.
• Against My Religion: When one of the animals' fake arms is dropped while accepting the pizza from the delivery boy, Otis claims it's a prosthetic, then refuses the delivery boy's offer to help him reattach it by claiming that he's a "Nohelpian", letting the guy keep the arm as a "tip".
• All-CGI Cartoon: The style of the movie and later the animated series.
• All Just a Dream: The animals pull this on the Farmer after he catches them partying.
• Animal Gender-Bender: Otis, Ben, and almost all of the bulls in the movie look like cows. To be fair, Daisy also looks like a cow despite being a heifer, and there isn't really any character that looks like a steer or a heifer, so it's likely that the image of a cow was used for all cattle without much thought put into it. Director Steve Oedekerk admits that he put udders on the bulls because he thought "it'd be funny to give them the incorrect anatomy", and he had figured that city folk thought that cattle would look like this (possibly the reason he put udders on the heifers as well). Muddying things even further is there's a scene with a bull that looks like a bull — riding a mechanical man. Perhaps bulls and cows are separate species in this universe. The movie itself pokes fun at this:
  Ben: I remember when I used to sit out here with your sister.
  Otis: I don't have a sister.
  Ben: Oh yeah, that was you, wasn't it?
• Arc Words: "A strong man stands up for himself. A stronger man stands up for others."
• Artistic License – Biology:
  • Coyotes do not travel in packs like wolves do, and are actually highly territorial, though it's implied that the other coyotes joined Dag because they were impressed with his skills at hunting chickens.
  • Male cattle are depicted as having udders, which they do not have in real life. Rule of Funny applies, though.
• Art-Style Dissonance: The cartoony CGI cows fit in fine with the goofy farm antics. The dark Western revenge story which actually drives the plot, not so much...
• Ax-Crazy: Dag has too much fun in the hunt. And then there is the fact that he keeps the legs from the chickens he has killed before as decorations for his chain...
• Babies Make Everything Better: The end of the movie has Daisy giving birth, and Otis doesn't lose his protector zen about it.
• Back Stab: Dag's way of killing seems to be sneaking around and biting his opponent in the back while they're occupied with his minions.
  • Miles also does this, kicking the Farmer in the head from the side to knock him out several times.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Otis is generally a goofball, but he proves very effective at fighting Dag's pack on even ground even when he's outnumbered. When he has Dag at his mercy in the climax, he becomes downright menacing and is verily clearly considering killing him before deciding not to sink to his level.
  Otis: Remember me?
  [Dag shakes his head.]
  Otis: I'm Ben's kid.
  Dag visibly panics before Otis slams him into a car window hard enough to crack the glass.
• Big Damn Heroes: Just when things look bleak for Otis, he's saved by two of these: first the arrival of Pip, Pig, Freddy, Peck, Miles, Wild Mike and the gophers, then the Jersey cows burst onto the scene in the car they took for a joyride earlier.
• Big Fun: Besides the cows and Pig, there's also Biggie Cheese, an incredibly obese rapping rat.
• Big, Thin, Short Trio: The Jersey Cows consist of Igg (Big), Eddy (Thin), and Bud (Short).
• Black-and-Grey Morality: Dag and his coyotes are pretty clear cut villains. The heroes are pretty loving, well-meaning, and they do look out for each other but they are also not perfect role models. The animals of the barnyard, except for the hens, Ben, and Miles, act pretty much like reckless and irresponsible college kids or young adults.
• Bloodless Carnage: Despite having been mauled by coyotes, Ben is perfectly fine save for a little bit of blood around his mouth. He dies, of course.
• Call-Back: Otis putting Dag in the climax calls back to the former practicing golf in the start of the film.
• Canines Gambling in a Card Game: During the party in the barn house some dogs are seen playing poker while one animal is painting a picture of them in the exact same likeness of the original panting.
• Cartoon Creature: This dancing hairy creature called Wild Mike. He heavily resembles Captain Caveman.
• Cassandra Truth: Mrs. Beady is the only one who realizes that cows hijacked her car and throw nightly parties. She reprises this role in Back at the Barnyard.
• Central Theme: "A strong man stands up for himself, a stronger man stands up for others". According to Steve Oedekerk, the movie is about family and what makes a family is people being there for each other and caring for one another.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Miles, Dag, and Daisy have not appeared or even been mentioned at all in the TV series. The latter is especially ridiculous because she gave birth to a son with Otis at the end. (Well, technically, it was her son from a previous relationship, who Otis adopts with her, but still.)
• Coming of Age Story: The entire film is one for Otis. Starting as a rowdy, troublemaking party animal, he finds himself thrust into a position of leadership when his adoptive father Ben dies after a coyote attack, and the animals nominate him as their new leader. Initially struggling to fill Ben's shoes, Otis learns to stand up for others and become more responsible, eventually driving off the coyotes for good, and becoming an adoptive father himself.
• Company Cross-References: When the animals trick the farmer into thinking he's sleeping the entire time after getting knocked by Miles when he saw them acting like humans, they give him a copy of Charlotte's Web to read. Nickelodeon and Paramount would release a live-action version of the book later the same year.
• Constantly Lactating Cow: Played for Laughs. Not only can the female cattle give milk without nursing, but the male cattle say "Milk me" as a G-rated curse.
• Cow Tipping: After a boy engages in cow tipping along with his friends, the cows respond by “boy tipping” him.
• Cruel Coyotes: Dag, the film's primary antagonist, is a sadistic, heartless coyote who leads a pack of coyotes just as vicious as he is and terrorizes the farm where the main characters live. Whereas his pack hunts for food, he seems to prefer killing his victims over eating them and even proves this by holding a keychain adorned with chicken feet. Finally, he is even responsible for the death of Otis' father Ben, fully pushing him into the irredeemable territory. To further illustrate just how truly evil Dag is, the film's otherwise comedic tone disappears in a flash whenever he shows up.
• Dead Guy Junior: Daisy names her and Otis' son after Ben.
• Deadpan Snarker: Mr. Beady is this, particularly to his wife:
  Mrs. Beady: Randall! There is a cow outside!
  Mr. Beady: It's a cow farm. You're gonna find cows outside.
• Dirty Coward: Dag won't get his hands dirty against targets that fight back, but as soon as they turn their back on him...
  • He ultimately experiences this in the climax after he unsuccessfully tries to kill Otis like he did to his father Ben (thanks to Peck warning Otis ahead of time to grab Dag by the throat), as he becomes horrified of an angered Otis about to deal the final blow in revenge for his father. Instead, when Otis firmly warns Dag to never return again, he nods in agreement out of fear and lets himself get putted out of sight by Otis.
• The Dog Bites Back: After witnessing him tipping another cow and mocking them, Otis and the Jersey cows sneak into Snotty Boy's house and shove him out of bed. "THAT'S CALLED BOY TIPPING!! HA HA HA!!"
• A Dog Named "Dog": Or rather, a pig named Pig.
• Down in the Dumps: The coyotes make their home in a junkyard.
• Drunk on Milk: At the barn party, one of the barnyard animals is seen getting drunk from drinking the party beverage entitled "Milk & Honey".
• Dying Moment of Awesome: Let's face it — going out battling coyotes all while playing the Johnny Cash version of "I Won't Back Down" at the same time is an awesome way to die.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: This movie is much more solemn and grim than the subsequent animated series that would follow it. It's more of a combination between a wacky comedy and a Neo-Western dramedy (but you know, with cows).
• Eek, a Mouse!!: Pip gets in one coyote's ear. She panics about it.
• Exact Words: Dag promises Otis that he and his pack would kidnap only a few animals from the Barnyard every night, but didn't say anything about kidnapping seven hens during the day.
• Excuse Me While I Multitask: Ben can kick coyote ass and play a Tom Petty song in the style of Johnny Cash's cover at the same time.
• Family-Unfriendly Death: While there's no blood, the movie doesn't hide the fact that Ben dies from his wounds after the coyotes dogpile and maul him to death.
• Faux Affably Evil: Dag puts on an air of politeness, but even Maddy the chick can tell how phony it is, as she calls him a "meaner".
• Four Is Death: During the meeting after Ben is killed and Duke nominates himself as the leader of the Barnyard, even when his flaws of licking himself, drinking toilet water, fetching balls, and peanut butter are mentioned and present, he only gets four votes in favor of him being the new leader, one of which was the little cat 2 dogs intimidate it into holding up his sign, causing him to lose upon the overwhelming majority of "those opposed" votes.
• Gibberish of Love: Otis constantly gets tongue-tied around Daisy, stumbling over his words when he tries to talk to her.
• Girls Stare at Scenery, Boys Stare at Girls: This exchange:
  Daisy: It's beautiful, isn't it?
  Otis: My cud?
• Gonk: Most of the human characters are pretty weird-looking. The snotty-boy in particular has a very ugly appearance.
• Happily Adopted:
  • Ben is not actually the birth father of Otis: he took the latter in when he was just a calf. Although they do have their fights (most of them concerning the Manchild nature of Otis), it's clear that both of them love each other, and Otis is absolutely devastated when Ben dies.
  • Otis and Daisy raising her child (and his adoptive stepchild) Ben together at the film's end.
• Halfway Plot Switch: For the first half-hour or so of the film, it's an entertainingly silly Wacky Fratboy Hijinx plot with cows. Then Otis' father dies and it becomes a dark revenge Western story... with cows.
• He Knows Too Much: Defied.
  Freddy: He knows too much! We gotta take care of him. We gotta whack him!
  Otis: There will be NO WHACKING! Okay? The farmer's a good guy! He's been good to us.
• Heroic BSoD: Otis, after being beaten by the coyotes, tries to leave the barnyard out of shame over not being able to drive them off. It takes them coming for the chickens during the day to snap him out of it.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Ben dies protecting the chickens.
• Horrifying the Horror: After Otis successfully grabs Dag by the throat thanks to Peck crowing to warn him at the last second when Dag was about to kill him, the once-sadistic coyote himself becomes intimidated and absolutely petrified when Otis was angrily about to finish him off, then fearing the inevitable blow. Otis instead tells him to never come back word-by-word as Dag nods fearfully.
• Horror Hunger: Freddy the Ferret is constantly trying to resist himself from eating his best friend Peck the Rooster. He ends up turning this on the coyotes when biting one of them apparently tastes like chicken.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: After Mrs. Beady phones the police to tell them that cows stole their car, Mr. Beady pulls up a six-pack and cracks one open.
• Insult Backfire:
  Maddy: You're a meaner!
  Dag: (Mockingly) "Meaner, meaner." Well, meaners gotta eat too!
• Ironic Echo:
  Snotty Boy: That's called "cow tipping!" Haw haw haw!
  Otis: That's called "boy tipping!" Ha ha ha!
• Joisey: The Jersey cows are naturally portrayed as this, with thick accents, heavy drinking (of milk), and a penchant for getting up to mischief.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Once Otis grabs Dag by the throat and has the coyote at his mercy, while tempted to punch Dag like his father, but instead Otis warns Dag never to return to the barnyard. Seeing how Otis and his friends defeated his pack, and realizing Otis is dead serious, Dag whimpers and nods in agreement.
• Lactose over Liquor: At the party, the animals get drunk on milk mixed with honey.
• Language Fluency Denial: Although the farmer does, at one point, see the animals doing human-like things, he never actually hears them talking. The closest the farmer gets to hearing an animal talk is when Otis goes "Woo-hoo!", sees the farmer, and goes "Uh... moo?"
• Lazy Bum: Mr. Beady, who doesn't appear to do much other than sit in his chair, drinking and watching television.
• Manipulative Bastard: Although not shown much, Dag has some shades of this. It's most notable when he taunts Otis, making him feel terrible about not helping his father on the night he died, and afterwards proposing Otis a deal: he and his pack would only take a few animals each night, but if Otis tries again to stop them, they will slaughter every single one of them. He says to Otis that he will be seeing him around by the next nights. When he returns to the farm, it's during the day, relying on Otis only counting on him return at night as he had always done.
• Masquerade: Played for Laughs. While the animals don't speak to humans in English (or any human language), it's made clear that the animals really are speaking English and it's not just their noises being translated.
• Meat-O-Vision: While Peck and Freddy are on watch in the henhouse, Freddy's desire to eat the chickens manifests as all of them suddenly turning into giant cooked drumsticks.
• Mood Whiplash: It’s a kids movie about silly farm animals being funny, yet also has a genuine Vile Villain, Saccharine Show bad guy who serves a darker and more somber subplot about legacy and family. This is best encapsulated, early on, where much of the farm animals are having a big party with Biggie Cheese singing, while shortly after also showing Ben's tragic Last Stand.
• Mook Chivalry: Averted. The coyotes dogpile Ben and then Otis during the last fight.
• A Mouse Named "Mozzarella": A rapper rat named Biggie Cheese.
• Mundane Made Awesome: Playing a Tom Petty song on a homemade guitar? Simple enough. Playing a Tom Petty song on a homemade guitar while fighting a pack of coyotes? Now THAT's badass!
• My Instincts Are Showing: After Duke nominates himself for new leader, Miles points out how bad of an idea that would be by pulling out a ball and throwing it. Duke, of course, immediately bounds after it, then tries to claim he doesn't need to chase it... until Miles throws it again.
• Never Trust a Trailer: The trailers imply that this is a light-hearted comedy with crazy animal antics. The movie is really a dramedy about Otis' Coming of Age Story, his connection with his adopted father, and dealing with his issues of loss, identity, responsibility, and fear. It fact, it has some surprisingly dark stuff for a Nickelodeon film from the mid-2000s like when two of its major characters, Ben and Otis, get chewed up by coyotes.
• New Old West: This is less the wacky animal comedy that it was advertised as and more of a modern Western (with farm animals). Most of the animals (especially the chickens) are the innocent frontier townsfolk, Dag and his pack are the roving posse of bandits that threaten the town's safety and livelihood, and Ben is the Sheriff who keeps the bandits at bay and the town — er, farm — safe from them. Otis' Coming of Age Story is completed by him functionally becoming the new "Sheriff" after Ben's death.
• Oh, Crap!: The scene where the farmer walks in on the animals partying has this twofold: from every animal in the barn when he sees them and when he first regains consciousness, then from Otis when their first attempt to fool him didn’t work.
• Parental Abandonment: Ben found Otis as an orphaned calf following him in the fields, so he decided to raise him.
• Parental Bonus: Two female cows shown at party are getting their udders pumped of their milk for the beverage at the party.
• Parental Substitute: Ben isn't Otis' actual father, but adopted him and raised him as his own. Later, Otis himself adopts Daisy's child as their own, bringing things full circle.
• Precision F-Strike: The producers managed to include the Johnny Cash version of Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down". Complete with the word "hell". In a kid's movie. Arguably Downplayed, depending on how you view the word "Hell" — in the context of the song, it's referring to the location, "the gates of Hell", rather than as a curse word, which many consider perfectly acceptable.
• Predators Are Mean: Both played straight and played with. Dag and his coyotes are most certainly villains, and they take great pleasure in both hunting the farm animals and the fear it instills in them. However, Dag also rightly points out that they do have to eat as well.
  Dag: 'Meaner, meaner.' Meaners got to eat, too.
• Recycled with a Gimmick: But not in the way it was advertised. It's Animal House with cows meets a modern Western revenge story. (With cows.)
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Otis attempts one, chasing after Dag and his gang after witnessing them chasing a rabbit just beyond the fence. He loses steam the second they actually notice him and he only survives because Dag forces him into a one-sided deal.
• Romantic Ribbing: Daisy, Otis's pregnant love interest, at one point tells Otis the baby's coming, then laughs at his reaction.
  Daisy: Haha, I made you jump.
• Sassy Black Woman: Bessy has the voice and attitude of one.
• Screams Like a Little Girl: Hilariously, one of the coyotes does this after Pip crawls into his ear.
• The Secret Life of Nonhumans: The movie is about movie about farm animals who hide their walking and talking lifestyle from humanity, sometimes throwing late-night parties when the farmer is asleep. The movie later got its own spin-off series, Back at the Barnyard.
• Seinfeldian Conversation: In the middle of the farmer discovering them, it leads to a very intense discussion of what vegans are. It doesn't really help their case when the Farmer wakes up again.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: There are some elements of cynicism, but the movie is surprisingly very heartwarming.
• Sole Survivor: Daisy and her friend are the sole survivors of a flash flood that apparently wiped out their previous herd, including the father of her baby.
• Stab the Picture: In one of the party scenes, the chickens are seen throwing darts on a picture of Colonel Sanders taped to a dartboard.
• Talking Animal: Arguably the main point until Ben dies.
• Tar and Feathers: At the beginning of this film, when Otis and his friends go surfing, they fly through an oil well and a chicken farm, resulting in them becoming covered in feathers when they arrive at the barn during the morning meeting.
• Tastes Like Chicken: Freddy the ferret quotes this upon biting a coyote.
• Those Wily Coyotes: Dag and his pack usually fare poorly in straight-up fights, especially against Ben, so they tend to veer more on the sneaky side. Dag manages to kill Ben by sneaking up behind him and biting his ankle, blindsiding him and allowing the other coyotes to pile on him. He also tricks Otis by raiding the chicken coop in the afternoon, when he'd claimed they would come at night.
• Toilet-Drinking Dog Gag: After the death of Ben, Otis' father, Duke the sheepdog holds an emergency meeting over who the new leader of the farm animals should be. When Duke nominates himself to be the new leader, Pig objects and tells him that he saw him drink out of a toilet once, to which Duke tells him that he only did that because his water bowl was empty.
• Trampoline Tummy: While relaxing on the barn, Pip entertains himself by bouncing between Pig's stomach and Otis' udder.
• Unusual Euphemism: When Otis and the Jersey cows are on the run from the police, one of them is saying to himself "Oh, milk me!"
• Verbal Tic: Bud and Igg have a tendency to finish each other's words.
• Vigorous Bull:
  • Zig-Zagged. In a unique, Animal Gender-Bender example, both Ben and Otis are referred to as cows and are depicted with udders. According to director Steve Oedekerk, he “thought it would be funny for the male cows (bulls) to have udders” and believed that city viewers likely wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a bull and a cow. The animated series further complicates this by showing Otis and Ben producing milk and even having Otis enter a rodeo to compete against a Spanish fighting bull. In the film, although Ben is never referred to as a bull, he is strong, confident, and takes his responsibilities as leader of the barnyard seriously. He hopes that Otis will be ready to succeed him and believes Otis should take the threat imposed by the coyotes seriously. He believes that his son should be a man and fight for the barnyard after Otis says every animal should fend for themselves. After Ben dies fighting the coyotes to protect the hens, Otis is forced to succeed him.
    Ben: That fence defines our space. And as long as I'm still kicking, no animal will be harmed inside that fence.
    Otis: That's what you do. You, ok? If you're trying to groom me to be the big leader, just give it up. It's not me, pop. I mean, if I were in charge, things would be different. Every animal for himself. That's the way it should be.
    Ben: Otis. A strong man stands up for himself. A stronger man stands up for others.
  • Parodied in the party scene, when we briefly see a regular Spanish fighting bull being cheered on while riding a "mechanical man".
• Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: For a movie about farm animals that like to party, the coyotes, Dag especially, can be pretty terrifying.
• Villain Ball: Rather than just quickly kill Otis while he has him pinned down, Dag decided to gloat instead, allowing Otis time to recover.
• Visual Pun: Biggie Cheese performs "Boombastic" by Shaggy, and as he starts his song, we cut to a member of the barn band... a shaggy dog.
• Would Hurt a Child: Dag has absolutely no problems with eating Maddy, who is only a young chick.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Despite having Otis pinned down and wounded twice, Dag gloats and lets him recover for no discernible reason, even when it would guarantee his victory.
• You Killed My Father: Otis' father Ben was killed by Dag while he was protecting the chickens.
• Zerg Rush: Seems to be Dag's chief way of dealing with obstacles. He bites them first to weaken them, then orders his entire pack to pile on them.

♪ Well, I won't back down
No, I won't back down
And I'll keep this world from draggin' me down
Gonna stand my ground
And I won't back down ♪