Home on the Range
Ugh, this movie was bad. I don’t even know where to start.
Disney does animal stories. That’s fine. Disney hadn’t yet done a Western, and that’s such a staple of American folklore that they were duty-bound to make one eventually. So this wasn’t a surprising film in terms of subject and story. But the first problem with the story is this: no one really cares all that much about cows. Sorry. They’re terrible protagonists. When the one food recognized around the world as American is a hamburger, that should be a clue! The vast majority of the movie-going public isn’t going to empathize with dinner. The cows aren’t cute or attractive, either; they’re bulky with sagging stomachs and hip bones so sharp they threaten to tear through their hides. The faces are ugly – let’s face it, cows are not known for intelligent features or cuddliness. For a company so dedicated to the marketability of its movie characters, it’s baffling to me that they chose the humble bovine for the leads. The secondary problem is that these are not young cows; with the possible exception of Grace, all three cows sound like middle-aged women squabbling over the price of vegetables at the grocery store. If your target audience is adults, fine and dandy- but realistically, how many kids want to watch a movie about a trio of spinster maiden aunt-types?
Cows. Who cares?
Obviously, I didn’t like the main characters. Judi Dench voices a rather prim and proper Mrs. Calloway, and the aristocratic English accent sounds so bizarre and out of place in the Western frontier. How did an English cow get out there?? Roseanne Barr grates as Maggie, the newcomer and blue ribbon prize winner who is as loud and obnoxious as she could possibly be. She’s also terribly unfunny - was this particular joke worth bumping the film up to a PG rating?
Maggie (talking about her udders): Yeah, they’re real. Quit starin’.
No, it’s not. Jennifer Tilly’s Grace is a spaced-out New Age cow, rounding out the trio of mismatched personalities. I have to admit that it is nice to see female leads that aren’t princesses, but that doesn’t make the cows any more appealing. Rounding out the good guys is a wanna-be hero horse voiced by Cuba Gooding Jr. named Buck. He’s a kung-fu fightin’ tough love motherf***er…in his imagination, anyway. He seemed like a weak attempt to copy the donkey character from the Shrek franchise.
In a way, that’s the film’s problem. It feels like a Dreamworks movie, not a Disney movie. It’s full of the contemporary pop culture references and half-assed jokes that fill their films. But the bigger issue, I think, is that the essential animal-like qualities are lacking. Judi Dench doesn’t sound like a cow and Cuba Gooding Jr. doesn’t sound like a horse. By contrast, even John Travolta in Bolt brought a hyper, puppy-like earnestness to the role that was inarguably dog-like. But while some of the minor characters manage to embody the signature characteristics of their species – there’s a delightfully grumpy goat and a pair of bulls in the cow rustlin’ scenes that seemed much more in tune with their animal nature – the main characters are written too much like people.
But enough with the cows. I’m done with them. I’ll even throw some compliments at the movie to make up for so much negativity.
The backgrounds are GORGEOUS. They’re highly stylized Western landscapes full of sharp angles and flat, bright color. They really set the mood, letting the viewer know that this is going to be a different sort of Disney film. Just look at them!
I also found the villain, Alameda Slim, so kooky and bizarre that I enjoyed him immensely. A cattle hustler who steals the animals by yodeling so perfectly that it hypnotizes them? That’s so zany and strange that it just works. He even sings a song – “Yodel-Adle-Eedle-Idle-Oo” – and as he yodels through the verses the animation kicks up into a crazy “Pink Elephants on Parade” sequence. It was hands down the best sequence in the film.
But there’s so much working against this movie. The generic country music is quite forgettable, and the story is an
You know what makes it sadder? When story development first began, Disney was planning to do a Pied Piper movie. Somehow, that classic story devolved into this mess. It’s so very disappointing. And when I think that this movie will be followed by the abomination that is Chicken Little, I just want to cry for how far the Disney Studios had fallen.
2/10 stars.
After this movie completed production, Disney shut down its traditional animation studio. I can’t say I’m surprised – but why couldn’t Disney figure out that the STORY was the problem, not the animation???
