The story is about cows. I’m serious, fucking cows… An obnoxious one called Maggie is sold to an old farmer Pearl who shortly thereafter finds the bank is foreclosing on her and she likely will have to sell the farm. Even though she literally just got there, Maggie and two other cows, the stately Mrs. Calloway and the dimwitted Grace, go on a mission to catch a rustler called Alameda Slim who’s bounty is enough to save the farm.
The film opens with the Disney logo being branded on the screen and from that point on you know you’re in for a bad time. It’s very fittingly symbolic. Ironically this movie seems to be in some way trying to pay homage to classic Disney. The vultures are clearly references to The Jungle Book vultures, even the horse Buck seems reminiscent of the “Pecos Bill” sequence from Melody Time. Hell, that racist, possibly sexist short may be better than this whole movie. The pacing is abysmal -as I noted Maggie arrives on the farm, sickeningly named “Little Patch of Heaven”, mere minutes before we see the sheriff telling Pearl that the bank’s foreclosing on it. And because of this it hurts the effectiveness of the cows’ journey through the rest of the film. And need I remind you …cows. Nobody cares about cows! And nobody cares about cows chasing a cattle rustler! This was Disney’s attempt at a western and it’s a shame because I think they could do one pretty well. Something along the lines of DreamWorks’ fantastically underrated Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron which came out two years before. The writing is embarrassing. Like there are a bunch of piglets who keep repeating “awesome” in sync as if it’s supposed to be a catchphrase (if so, it’s the worst they could have come up with). Maybe it’s just more of Disney’s corporate whoring to young demographics that’s worked out SO well in the past! There are also plot points and character choices that make no sense. Mrs. Calloway does that thing where she tells Maggie everything was great till she came along, which again given how briefly Maggie was on the farm, her presence wouldn’t have affected anything in terms of the banks’ intentions. The exposition to Alameda Slim’s plan to buy all the ranches as revenge using a fake identity is pretty lazy. Pearl also apparently doesn’t eat any of her livestock which may be a reason the bank’s selling her farm in the first place. Why the hell does she have so many pigs and cows and chickens if she doesn’t eat or sell any of them? Charlotte’s Web was willing to address the fact that farm animals get slaughtered, why couldn’t this?
To distract from the dozens of plot problems, there’s much more a focus on jokes. But unfortunately, Home on the Range is astonishingly unfunny. I can’t think of one joke that didn’t fall flat, but tons of them were cringe-worthy. This movie seems to think belching jokes are somehow better than fart jokes, and is also under the mistaken impression that yodelling is anything other than galling. In one sequence, the cows burst into a saloon and there are a dozen bad slapstick gags thrown at you. The style of humour in this film, Disney’s clearly uncomfortable with. It’s quick and very simplistic, not imaginative despite how fast and energetic it may seem. It does suit the animation though. I think this film is trying to replicate The Emperor’s New Groove’s unique look and humour. But Home on the Range doesn’t have Yzma and Kronk, the saviours of that movie. Without them, The Emperor’s New Groove would have been terrible, though still probably better than this. I’m serious, there’s jokes that are decades old, and when a movie uses puns in the place of humour, you know something’s wrong. The only thing funny in the whole film is that at a couple points it actually expects you to care about these characters. How clueless could this movie be, it’s characters are so disengaging!
Ohhh, Joe Flaherty, what are you doing in this? Estelle Harris too! These are good comedic actors in really bland one-note comic relief roles. But any of them would have been more enjoyable leads. Of the four main characters, only Mrs. Calloway wasn’t ungodly annoying. But Judi Dench being in this is really sad as not only is Mrs. Calloway just a stuffy British stereotype, but Dench is a Dame and a great actress, she HAD to know this was a terrible script! I’ve never been a fan of Roseanne, her grating voice being the primary reason I’ve stayed away from her show. Why is she the lead in this? Was Roseanne in any way relevant for a Disney movie in 2004? The character Maggie is exactly like her, except less funny, and it’s painful to get through the movie with her incredibly unlikeable personality at it’s centre. She’s so sarcastic in her deliveries, it’s impossible to take anything she says remotely seriously. Though maybe she’s not quite as painful as Grace. Jennifer Tilly’s scratchy ditzy voice can be okay sometimes, but when she’s in a bad movie it’s especially irritating. Grace is nothing more than an airhead stereotype. And she gets to sing in this movie too, lovely! By the way, acknowledging that her singing is terrible doesn’t make it funny! Their competitor for Slim’s bounty is a doofus horse Buck voiced by Cuba Gooding Jr. And yeah, he’s about as bad as he was in Snow Dogs. They were playing him a little like Kuzco in The Emperor’s New Groove, but David Spade wasn’t all that good in that either. His obsession with becoming the horse of a famed bounty hunter called Ringo is pretty boring, and the redemption he undergoes is needless. Also, somehow he ends up on the farm along with the sheriff’s dog. Ohhh, Rizzo from M*A*S*H, what are you doing in this? The minor characters are either bland or Disney tropes. Pearl is every caring old woman figure we’ve seen before, the sheriff just the eccentric official. Lucky Jack the rabbit had potential to be entertaining and maybe would have been in another movie, but not here. I don’t see what Buck sees in Ringo apart from the Clint Eastwood rip-off; he and a number of other characters could have been scrapped entirely (should have, more like). Then we come to the villains. Ohhh, Steve Buscemi, what are you doing in this? Again, what a waste of a great actor (his character’s name was Weasley. I hate to think this is in the same universe as Harry Potter). Any entertainment or intimidation Alameda Slim could have provided, went out the window the moment Randy Quaid was cast. He’s less insufferable as Cousin Eddie; like Roseanne he’s a strange choice for 2004. The yodelling I don’t get, it’s hypnotic effect on cows is really out there. His henchmen are that cliché trio that look exactly alike and are virtually brain-dead. And the dumb voices they have, have been done to death in a number of Warner Brothers cartoons. Slim’s got a buffalo who’s racist to non-cattle I guess, and there’s even a cameo villain horse. Ohhh, Patrick Warburton…you know the rest.
I mentioned the yodeling already which is expectedly atrocious, but the music overall is pretty bad too. The return of musical numbers is clearly another attempt to hearken back to classic Disney but in the worst way possible. It feels more like the movie saying: ‘You recognize this Disney signature? Well let’s show you how we fuck it up?’ Even the songs that are trying to be sentimental utterly fail, both due to bad writing and the fact that no emotions ring true. None of the characters are likeable or the stakes important. You couldn’t care less whether Pearl loses her farm and is separated from her pets, so the soft music set to her reminiscing doesn’t work. Also, the soundtrack includes k.d. lang. The climax may be the least exciting attempt at an exciting climax, and the defeat of the villain and subsequent resolution is so stupid to the point it’s insulting the filmmakers think this is what kids want to see. But then again, it’s really obvious the story, characters, and even visuals weren’t important to the filmmakers. This really feels like a movie put together by a statistics committee. …And they’d never work for Disney again -my god, this movie is horrendous!
Home on the Range is the film that killed traditional animation at Disney, and though I love traditional animation to death, I get it (thank god for John Lasseter a few years later ending the form on a better note). I’ve seen bad Disney movies before this, but even at their worst there was something I could find to like in them. But not Home on the Range. It’s unbelievable this came from a studio with such a high standard as Disney, and it’s one of the worst animated films ever to hit theatres. I’d bet even some of the direct-to-video Disney sequels are better than this. Given its subject matter, it’s quite apt to say Home on the Range is nothing more than bullshit.
Next Week: Chicken Little (2005)
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