Home on the Range (2004)

To be completely honest, I had to look up this film online to refresh my memory of the plot points. That sentence alone should tell you loud and clear what kind of impression this film makes on its audience. This is pretty much lowest-common denominator Disney. It may satisfy visually but without memorable characters or a compelling story, there is nothing to recommend here outside of a momentary distraction.

After the rest of her herd is stolen by the dastardly Alameda Slim (Randy Quaid), Maggie (Roseanne Barr), is sold to the Patch of Heaven farm, where she butts heads with two prim and proper cows named Grace (Jennifer Tilly) and Mrs. Calloway (Judi Dench). When Patch of Heaven is threatened with foreclosure, Maggie convinces the other cows to band together and find a way to raise enough money to save the farm. Upon learning that the bounty on Alameda Slim is the exact amount needed to save their home, Maggie steers the trio headlong into an adventure that is as revealing as it is dangerous.

The basic plot of this film has been done more times than I can count. Whether it’s winning a contest, putting on a show, or (in this case) finding something to claim a reward, we’ve seen this outline too many times before to even mistake it as original. Using an archetypal story isn’t a sin, however. The real problem is that Disney fails to give Home on the Range any satisfying twists on said archetypal story. Oh sure, there are outlandish deviations from the blueprint but perhaps a yodeling cattle rustler is a little too out there to be accepted by anyone who has finished elementary school.

The timing of Home on the Range is tragic. Computer-animated films had taken over and Disney, reading the writing on the wall, decided to make one last traditional animated film for nostalgia’s sake. The animation in this film showcases the sad slide in quality that befell Disney over a half-dozen years. It’s not bad but it’s often no better than Disney’s TV cartoons (if they even still made them for afternoon and Saturday morning TV by 2004).

The characters in this film are hit or miss. Roseanne Barr’s sassy, blue-collar wit is something I grew up with, so that may explain why I’m okay with Maggie. She is a little paint-by-numbers but the personality injected by the voice actor goes a long way. I cannot say that the same goes for the rest of the cast. Grace and Mrs. Calloway fall under the typical goodie-goodie types who grow to appreciate their boisterous colleague but never really approve of her behavior. It’s more solidarity than sisterhood. Everyone else is just there to fill a role and provide their own brief moment of uniqueness but they fail to leave a mark.

When a film alternates between trying too hard and not trying hard enough, it makes it hard to know what to think. This review feels almost like a collection of incomplete thoughts but maybe that’s less of strike against me and more of a strike against the film. As far as Disney films go, Home on the Range is terrible. Fortunately, terrible for Disney is still a mostly-harmless way to kill some time if you absolutely must.

RATING: 2.75 out of 5