Home on the Range

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♥ This article is dedicated to Carole Cook who played Pearl Gesner (January 14, 1924 - January 11, 2023, from heart failure at 98), Joe Flaherty who played Jeb the goat (June 21, 1941 - April 1, 2024, at 82 after a short illness), Lance LeGault who played Junior the buffalo (May 2, 1935 - September 10, 2012, at 77 from heart failure), Estelle Harris who played Audrey the red chicken (April 22, 1928 - April 2, 2022 at 93 from natural causes), Marshall Efron who played Larry the duck (February 3, 1938 - September 30, 2019 at 81 from cardiac arrest), Ann Richards who played Annie the saloon owner (September 1, 1933 - September 13, 2006 at 73 from cancer), and Dennis Weaver who played Abner Dixon (June 4, 1924 - February 24, 2006 at 81 from prostate cancer). May all those voice actors rest in peace.
Home on the Range
Disney's disappointing end of the 2D animation film era... which was only thankfully saved by The Princess and the Frog.
Genre: Animated
Comedy
Drama
Musical
Directed by: Will Finn
John Sanford
Produced by: Alice Dewey Goldstone
Written by: Will Finn
John Sanford
Starring: Roseanne Barr
Judi Dench
Jennifer Tilly
Cuba Gooding Jr.
Randy Quaid
Steve Buscemi
Photography: Color
Editing: H. Lee Peterson
Music by: Alan Menken
Production company: Walt Disney Pictures
Walt Disney Feature Animation
Distributed by: Buena Vista Pictures
Release date: March 21, 2004 (El Capitan Theatre)
April 2, 2004 (United States
Runtime: 76 minutes
Country: United States
Language: English
Budget: $110 million
Box office: $103 - 145.3 million
Prequel: Brother Bear
Sequel: Chicken Little

Home on the Range is a 2004 American animated western musical comedy film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The 45th Disney animated feature film was the last 2D animated Disney film released until The Princess and the Frog in 2009. Named after the popular country song of the same name, Home on the Range features the voices of Roseanne Barr, Judi Dench, Jennifer Tilly, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Randy Quaid, and Steve Buscemi.

Plot

When an eviction notice shows up at the gates of the Patch of Heaven dairy farm, three cows, Maggie, Grace, and Mrs. Calloway, take it upon themselves to prevent their home from being taken away. To do so, they set out on a quest, along with the Sheriff's horse, to collect the ransom on outlaw Alameda Slim, an infamous wanted cattle rustler.

Production

Before he pitched Pocahontas (1995), director Mike Gabriel considered adapting Western legends such as Annie Oakley, Buffalo Bill, and Pecos Bill into animated films. While he pitched both projects at the Gong Show meeting, the executives were more interested in Pocahontas, which went into production first. When Pocahontas was finished, Gabriel went back to his Western pitch and came up with an "idea that might combine Captains Courageous with a Western." The initial story involved a young boy from the Far East whose father owns a railroad and sends his son to the Western United States to teach him maturity. According to Gabriel, "the train gets held up by outlaws over a train trestle, and the little boy gets knocked off the train ... He splashes in the river and ends up on a cattle drive." Gabriel developed his story into a forty-page film treatment, which was well received by then-Feature Animation president Peter Schneider. Soon after, the project, then titled Sweating Bullets, went into development.

Inspired by the song "Ghost Riders in the Sky", the story was then revised into a supernatural western about a timid cowboy who visits a ghost town and confronts an undead cattle hustler named Slim. In this version, he and the Willies rode their ghost herds through the clouds and constantly drove livestock off cliffs to increase their herd. It was later reconceived into a story about a little bull named Bullets, that wanted to be more like the horses that led the herd. In 1999, in an attempt to salvage the production and retain the existing characters and background art, story artist Michael LaBash suggested a different approach to the story with one that involved three cow protagonists who become bounty hunters to save the farm. Building on the idea, fellow story artists Sam Levine, Mark Kennedy, Robert Lence, and Shirley Pierce developed a new storyline. However, by October 2000, Gabriel and co-director Mike Giaimo were removed from the project because of persistent story problems. Will Finn, who had returned to Disney Feature Animation after co-directing The Road to El Dorado (2000) at DreamWorks Animation, and John Sanford were hired as the new directors.

By this point, there were twelve storyboard artists and four screenwriters, including David Reynolds, working on the film. Finn and Sanford decided to downsize the writing team, with Reynolds later being recruited to write the Finding Nemo screenplay. At one point, the story incorporated elements from the Pied Piper story. Following a suggestion by Alan Menken, Alameda Slim was reconceived into a cattle huster who used his yodeling talents to hypnotize and abscond with the herd. The character Pearl Gesner, who was to be voiced by Sarah Jessica Parker, was rewritten into an elderly woman. Relatively late into production, the character Maggie was also rewritten to make her an outsider to the other farm animals in order to differentiate the group dynamic.

Music

In February 1998, Alan Menken had signed a long-term agreement with the Walt Disney Studios to compose songs and/or scores for animated and live-action films. Following this, according to Menken, he was attached to provide music for Sweating Bullets "maybe a year and a half after Hercules". Shortly after winning the ASCAP Foundation Richard Rodgers New Horizons Award, lyricist Glenn Slater was brought to the attention of Menken, who invited Slater to work with him on Sweating Bullets.

Together, they wrote the first of the film's six original songs back in 1999; the first of which was "Little Patch of Heaven" recorded by k.d. lang before Finn and Sanford were brought on board as directors. The villain song "Yodel-Adle-Eedle-Idle-Oo," which incorporates the "William Tell Overture," Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and the "1812 Overture" into the yodel dance, was added following several story changes throughout production. Although Randy Quaid did his own singing for "Yodel-Adle-Eedle-Idle-Oo", including the consonants heard during the yodels, the vowel sounds in the yodeling were overdubbed from ghost singers Randy Erwin and Kerry Christianson, two world champion yodelers. Following the September 11 attacks, Menken composed the song "Will the Sun Ever Shine Again" in reaction, which was performed by Bonnie Raitt.

The soundtrack album of the film was released on March 30, 2004, by Walt Disney Records. It contains vocal songs performed by k.d. lang, Randy Quaid, Bonnie Raitt, Tim McGraw, and The Beu Sisters along with the film's score composed by Alan Menken.

Release

Home on the Range was initially scheduled for a 2003 release, while Brother Bear was originally slated for a spring 2004 release. However, Disney announced that the release dates were switched with both movies. Contrary to speculation, news writer Jim Hill stated the release date switch was not because Home on the Range was suffering from story rewrites, but to promote Brother Bear on the Platinum Edition release of The Lion King.

Home media

Home on the Range was released on VHS and DVD on September 14, 2004. The DVD came with an animated short, A Dairy Tale, a series of 18 little shorts called the Joke Corral, and animated intros to the DVD menu. All three featuring the voice cast from the film. The film was released on Blu-ray on July 3, 2012.

Bad Qualities

  1. The main protagonists are pretty weak and cliché, such as Maggie, Grace, and Mrs. Calloway.
  2. Alameda Slim is a dull antagonist who comes across as more unfunny than evil. His motives are very stupid and lame, as he wants to take over the United States of America by purchasing every single land...just to take over the country.
  3. Kitsch and weak voice acting, especially for Disney standards, with overused hillbilly accents, like Roseanne Barr who starred in her own show, Roseanne until its cancellation in 2018.
    • It doesn't help that Barr later made a racist tweet about Valerie Jarrett, a senior advisor to former President Obama on May 29, 2018.
  4. Many jokes are very weak, stale, repetitive, and unfunny, with bad puns and one-liners (e.g. "What's her specialty? Sour cream?") and western stereotypes.
  5. While the animation is rather decent for Disney standards, the CGI backdrops are very artificial and fake, and many character models are recycled, such as Slim's henchmen.
  6. Laughable and poor dialogue, such as Maggie's "What is this, the frozen food section?" and "Well, if isn't the three maids of milking."
  7. Pitifully standard and unoriginal story with overuse of every western cliché in the book that gets boring pretty quickly.
  8. The film often rips off many elements from other better animated Wild West-themed films such as An American Tail: Fievel Goes West and Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron.
  9. Parts of the film outright stop talking down to its audience.
  10. Despite the film being set in Western times, there are various anachronisms, such as Wesley mentioning "ASAP", slang that was not around during that time.
  11. While "Yodel-Adle-Eedle-Idle-Oo" is good and catchy, Slim hypnotizing the cattle is implied to be a reference to drugs.
  12. Unfitting dark comedy aspects and inappropriate moments in a PG-rated Disney movie, such as a fly staring at Maggie's backside, a couple of steers sexually harassing the protagonists, and a bandit carrying a knife to deal with enemies.
  13. Many of the characters start off as often annoying and unlikable, such as Buck, who often becomes grating, and the tone-deaf Grace.
  14. The writing is a mixed bag and could be only appreciated by those who can't count past two on their fingers.
  15. This film killed Disney's interest in making anymore 2D-animated movies, along with Winnie the Pooh (2011)'s failure at the box office (even though The Princess and the Frog, their first 2D-animated movie in five years, was a commercial success).

Good Qualities

  1. There is at least good animation.
  2. There are some good songs, such as Little Patch of Heaven, Yodel-Adle-Eedle-Idle-Oo, Anytime You Need a Friend, and Will the Sun Ever Shine Again?
  3. Passable voices like Jennifer Tilly as Grace, Steve Buscemi as Wesley, Judi Dench as Mrs. Calloway, and a few others.
  4. While some jokes are weak, others are good like "Big Mike Donald had a farm? E-I-E-I (SMACK!) Oh..."
  5. The action scenes are enjoyable and exciting.
  6. Lucky Jack is a likable and funny character.
  7. The plot twist of Rico being a minion of Alameda Slim is played out perfectly and helps Buck to realize the error of his ways and aid the cows near the end.
  8. Steve Buscemi's line: "I gave up clown college for this?"
  9. There was a deleted scene where Slim's intentions were to take over the White House, which would have made a much better film.
  10. One scene does have Grace singing the film's namesake song, though off key.
  11. They managed to end the film on a high note where most of the animals have won prizes at the county fair.

Reception

Home on the Range received mixed reviews from critics and audiences, with criticism towards its songs, humor, characters, and story, although voice acting, Alan Menken's score, and action scenes are praised. Rotten Tomatoes reported that 53% of critics gave positive reviews based on 128 reviews, with an average rating of 5.72/10. The site's consensus is: "Though Home on the Range is likable and may keep young children diverted, it's one of Disney's more middling titles, with garish visuals and a dull plot." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 50 out of 100, based on 30 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. It is often (to this day) coincided with the low point of the animated Disney canon next to Chicken Little a year later.

Critical reception

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 52% of 128 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5.7/10. The website's consensus reads: "Though Home on the Range is likeable and may keep young children diverted, it's one of Disney's more middling titles, with garish visuals and a dull plot." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 50 out of 100, based on 30 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A–" on an A+ to F scale.

Nathan Rabin, reviewing for The A.V. Club, praised the film describing it as "a sweet, raucously funny, comic Western that corrects a glaring historical injustice by finally surveying the Old West through the eyes of cows rather than cowboys." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 2+1⁄2 stars out of 4, saying that "A movie like this is fun for kids: bright, quick-paced, with broad, outrageous characters. But Home on the Range doesn't have the crossover quality of the great Disney films like Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King. It doesn't have the freshness and originality of a more traditional movie like Lilo & Stitch. Its real future, I suspect, lies in home video. It's only 76 minutes long, but although kids will like it, their parents will be sneaking looks at their watches." Claudia Puig of USA Today wrote favorably in her review that "Home on the Range is a throwback to old Disney cartoons: fun, rather than message-laden, with broad humor and entertaining action. The cheerful, plucky characters have heart and loyalty, and that's enough to make this a worthy family-friendly animated fest." Nell Minow of Common Sense Media gave the film four out of five stars, saying that "I love it when Disney doesn't take itself too seriously. No one tried to reach for the stars or make this into a classic. Home on the Range is just a cute little story about some not-so-contented cows who save the day. It modestly aspires to be nothing more than a lot of fun, and it does that job very well.

Elvis Mitchell of The New York Times criticized the weak comedy writing that "Unrestrained energy is hardly a bad thing for animation — the best cartoons are built on the contradictory pursuit of meticulously arranged anarchy—but they never seem needy, or desperate for laughs, as Home on the Range does. The film seems hungrier for a pat on the head than a chuckle." Similarly, Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan claimed "Home on the Range may be acceptable on reflection, but its formulaic desire to mix wisecracks for adults with pratfalls for kids is feeling thin, and its overall air of frantic hysteria does not wear well either." Michael Wilmington of The Chicago Tribune noted "Satirizing the movie Western can make for a great cartoon, as it does in Jiri Trnka's brilliant 1949 Czech short Song of the Prairie, a puppet version of Stagecoach. But Home isn't good satire or good slapstick. It does have those lyrical, catchy Menken tunes, and the film perks up whenever Raitt or lang sing one of them. But much of this movie is deadly. Home keeps milking the same gags and throwing the same bull, and after a while you feel cowed watching it."

Box office

On its opening box office weekend, Home on the Range grossed about $14 million in box office estimates, opening fourth behind Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, Walking Tall, and Hellboy. Following the disappointing box office weekend, financial analysts predicted that Disney would be forced to write-down the production costs, which totaled more than $100 million. Following the latter release of The Alamo (2004), which also met poor box office returns, it was reported that Disney would have to write-down about $70 million. The film ended its box office run with $50 million in domestic earnings and $145.3 million worldwide.

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Trivia

  • This was originally going to be the last 2D animated film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios (known at the time as Walt Disney Feature Animation), but Walt Disney Animation Studios later released another 2D animated film, The Princess and the Frog, in 2009, five years after Home on the Range. The last 2D animated film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios ended up being Winnie the Pooh in 2011.
  • The original pitch for the film was titled Sweating Bullets and was a supernatural western about a timid cowboy who visits a ghost town and confronts an undead cattle hustler named Slim. The character was later changed to a bull named Bullets.
  • Originally Alameda Slim and his trio of henchmen were going to be ghost rustlers after being killed in a stampede. The one-legged rabbit whose leg Slim stole was going to be a protagonist.
  • The deleted scenes on the DVD revealed an alternate opening with three singing/narrating fly creatures, an alternate meeting with Lucky Jack, a coyote chase scene, and a different goal by Slim to use his hypnotized cows to storm the White House and be president. The producers realized all these scenes worked well on their own, but not in the context of the overall film, so they cut them all out.
  • The main character was supposed to be a human boy at first, then a male calf, then Maggie, Mrs. Calloway, and Grace.

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