Home on the Range (2004)

Home on the Range (2004)

Home on the Range single-handedly killed Disney’s 2D animation department for five years and nearly spelled the end for all traditional, western animation; to be honest, to talk about it any further seems kind of redundant. Okay, okay, to be fair “single-handedly” is a little extreme, Disney had slowly been growing disillusioned with their traditionally animated films since the end of the Renaissance and the huge disappointment ofTreasure Planet is really what started pushing them towards fully computer animated movies. With the subsequent disappointment of Brother Bear, it can be argued that the similarly poor reaction to Home on the Range was simply the final nail in the coffin for Disney’s traditionally animated films, but boy, what a big nail it was.

Regardless of how much it had to do with the decline of traditional animation, the animation in Home on the Range is hardly anything all that bad; things are smooth and detailed and everything you really come to expect from Disney, there’s nothing really all that wrong with it and there are some good sequences. However, the animation really lacks any sense of life or joy, it can be very over-the-top and kooky, but it all seems hollow and awkward, you can feel through the drawings that despite the time and effort they were putting into it, the animators didn’t really care about bringing these characters to life, so they fail to do so; the screen is populated with soulless husks who simply play their parts, rather than become truly immersed in them. This is especially strange, considering that Home on the Range seems to want to be a goofy, over-the-top comedy in the style of earlier Disney films, or, to a lesser extent, a slightly cuter version of The Emperor’s New Groove; why then, if the film is supposed to be fun and zany, is the animation so dull? It’s not like there isn’t a lot of exaggerated movement or cartoony expressions, or bright colours, or stylised character designs, but it just feels like something is missing; Home on the Range is like a sad clown, it walks out on stage and puts on its act with a smile on its face, but behind the scenes, it takes no joy in what it’s doing. 

The story follows a trio of sassy cows who have to learn to work together to save their farm by defeating a flamboyant, yodelling cattle rustler. It’s as stupid as it sounds. Like all the worst Disney movies, Home on the Range’s greatest flaw is its reliance on filler, frequently diverting attention from its main “plot” to indulge in random, pointless scenes intended purely to stretch out the already short running time, displaying an utter lack of care for its story or characters. The film is paced awfully, it drops you into things way too quickly, without taking the proper time to establish its characters or setting and since it never stops jumping all over the place, it means that it can never take the time to really establish these things later, either; as a result, you never really care about what’s going on or who’s doing what. Though the film does establish its conflict – the farm the animals live on is going to be sold, so they have to raise money to save it – quickly, perhaps a little too quickly, it spends most of its running time meandering around this point, demonstrating how little confidence it has in its own story and ability to keep the audience invested through that alone, a justified concern, considering just how terribly this flimsy attempt for a story is handled. Like The Aristocats, Dinosaur and Brother Bear, the film effectively consists of a long journey that, instead of featuring interesting characters and situations along the way, just runs a single idea into the ground for as long as it can. However, unlike those movies, which end up feeling slow and empty, this feels way too fast and overstuffed, as rather than have almost nothing happen to its characters, way too much happens; the film is packed to the brim with stuff, it’s just that none of that stuff is relevant to the story OR entertaining on any level. Honestly, half the time I had to really take a look at what I was watching and actively question what was going on, so much stuff is completely random and makes no sense, the movie is way too hyperactive, with no sense of direction or purpose, it’s just a lot of stuff happening. Home on the Range seems to be under the impression that if it’s just weird and doesn’t make sense, it will labelled as having a “quirky” or “off-the-wall” sense of humour, like The Emperor’s New Groove, however, they fail to realise that unless they actually connect these scenes properly and write them with a level of competence, they aren’t going to ironically not make sense, they’re just not going to make sense.

Similarly, the film suffers from an incredibly juvenile sense of humour, again believing that as long as it has weird and “quirky” characters it can get away with not actually writing funny jokes or genuine character traits. Home on the Range seems to want quite desperately to be a DreamWorks animated movie, most likely as an attempt by Disney to compete with DreamWorks’ more offbeat and irreverent comedies which had begun to dominate the animated film market at this point; consequently, Home on the Rangepopulates itself with gross “adult” humour which is actually very childish, such as burping, farting and boob jokes, incredibly lazy puns and nonsensical modern references. Even the musical score seems to be making fun of its terrible jokes, with loads of goofy sound effects accompanying the punch lines, seemingly commenting on how stupid these lines are; I can almost see Alan Menken in the recording studio thinking ‘How am I supposed to write a musical cue for a cow saying “yes they’re real” about its udders? I guess I just play a wah-wah effect because it’s so dumb? ...I need a new job.’ Whether or not Disney can ever pull off this “edgier” style is a matter of opinion, but I think it’s safe to say they definitively fail to do so in this instance. This hyperactive pacing and consistently obnoxious sense of humour means that there is almost never a quiet moment, the characters are constantly riffing or doing something stupid or the music is blaring, it just never stops and this quickly becomes exhausting and frustrating; the film doesn’t seem to understand the importance of taking a quiet moment to build atmosphere, or let a joke sink in, or develop genuine relationships amongst its characters. This means that even when the movie does provide a decent joke (few that there are), it walks all over the delivery and kills its own punch line; few movies are so masochistically self-destructive and Home on the Range seems so enamoured with its own ineptitude that it sabotages itself any time it might even produce a nanosecond of entertainment.

The cast of Dinosaur might be Disney’s most boring and undeveloped, but the cast ofHome on the Range may be its most hateful. Our heroine, Maggie is little more than an annoying braggart, without any of the comedic possibilities; everything about her, from her facial expressions to her voice, is a pure and undiluted irritant, every time she speaks it makes my skin crawl. All she does is make stupid puns, complain about the other characters and act smug, she is entirely unlikeable. There is a painfully obvious attempt to make her “tough” and “cool” and give her a no-nonsense “attitude” so that she’s down with the kids!!!! (Another attempt at aping DreamWorks, specifically the character of Shrek) Why Disney thought kids would think, of all things, a chubby cartoon cow voiced by Roseanne Barr is cool, I have no idea; she is intolerable. Mrs. Calloway is a stuffy, joyless stick in the mud, like Zazu or Sebastian except without any of the likeability; she is a bore and a nuisance, who seems intent on making things even less fun than they already are, with her only endearing attribute being that she seems to dislike Maggie as much as I do. Grace is the closest the film has to a likeable character, in that she’s just kind of friendly and nice and is voiced by Jennifer Tilly, who just possesses an inherent charm; she doesn’t have anything else to her, no, but at least she isn’t insanely annoying like the others. In most Disney movies, the dull, friendly character is the least interesting, being flanked by a group of more fun and lively side characters; the fact that Grace is the most watchable character of the movie speaks volumes to how charmless this cast is. 

Besides the main trio, there is Buck, a stupid, narcissistic horse who wants to become a hero of the frontier but proves himself completely inept at every turn; this is honestly a legitimately funny idea for a character and there are all sorts of humorous situations he could get into, parodying classic western stars like Clint Eastwood or John Wayne. Instead, Buck is, like all the other characters, an unsuccessful DreamWorks rip-off, effectively just being a meaner and impossibly, even more irritating version of Donkey from Shrek. With his performance, Cuba Gooding Jr. seems to be channelling Chris Tucker, while doing a vocal impression of Chris Rock (he almost seems to predict Rock’s terrible zebra character from the Madagascar series); Buck is a rehash of a character type that was, depressingly, all too common in the early 2000’s, in films such as the aforementioned Shrek, as well as things like the Rush Hour series. In any other movie, the goofy, yammering, little sidekick, Lucky Jack, would be “The Hooter”; in this one, he’s par for the course. Do I really need to say anymore? Alameda Slim is, surprise, surprise, an entirely unimpressive and pathetic villain, being played as deliberately silly and comical rather than threatening, but without any of the necessary qualities to you know, ACTUALLY BE FUNNY. He’s not even in the movie very much but when he is, he adds absolutely nothing of value, comedic or otherwise; plus, he kinda looks like Ratcliffe, which is never a good thing.

Following the format of the last few films, most of the songs here aren’t traditional musical numbers, they’re just songs sung over the action; unlike most of the last few films, however, the songs here feel completely unnecessary, they do not exist to actually add anything to the movie, they are just there to fill time. Unsurprisingly then, little to no care is put into any of these songs, whose very existence demonstrates how few ideas Disney had for this movie. The only legitimate musical number the movie has and the only one that ties in at all to narrative or characterisation is “Yodel-Adle-Eedle-Idle-Oo” (it hurt me to even write that), a villain song which is just... dumb. There is at least an attempt to have some clever lyricism, but this is abandoned quickly as the songwriters clearly lacked enough wit or imagination to continue; in fact, any sense of creativity is abandoned, as it stops being an original song and just becomes the villain yodelling to famous classical pieces, that’s how lazy this song is. This number comes out of nowhere, doesn’t fit the tone of the situation whatsoever and goes as soon as it came, with little acknowledgement to how bizarre and ill-fitting it was, as if it never happened at all. To cut a long story short, it stinks.

I don’t even know where to start with this one, other than to say that there is almost nothing whatsoever to like about it. The animation isn’t technically bad and some of the jokes have a good conception, but bad follow through; that’s honestly all the positivity I can muster for this strange and stupid movie. The pacing is terrible, the characters insufferable, the music superfluous, the humour nauseating; this movie is simply unpleasant. Is it quite as bad as its reputation suggests? Probably not, but at the end of the day it’s extremely easy to see why this miserable failure of a comedy did so much damage to Disney’s already waning reputation, it’s a complete mess.

2/10