The West is grim, thanks to Alameda Slim (Randy Quaid). This notorious cattle rustler has been robbing the local farms dry, and the bank is in a panic, calling in all of it's old debts. Enter Maggie, a show-cow and blue-ribbon winner, voiced obnoxiously by Roseanne Barr. Her farm's been closed down, and her owner, who can't afford to keep her, decides she'll be better off at the "Patch of Heaven," a small, picturesque ranch run by a widow, in which all of the animals are treated like family. Already residing there is a 'colorful cast of characters,' including bovines Mrs. Calloway (Judi Dench), the cliched 'prim and propper' character with a british accent, and Grace (Jennifer Tilly), the cliched airhead character. Since Maggie is already filling the role of the cliched 'Outsider,' poorly written sparks fly. But just as the three are not-quite settling in to life together, tragedy strikes; the bank is foreclosing the Patch Of Heaven.

However, inspirations strikes as the trio decide to set off to capture the notorious Alameda Slim; Maggie, for payback, and the others to use the reward money to keep the Patch Of Heaven open. As cliched and annoying gags progress from bad to worse, (can there be such a thing as character developement on the negative scale if characters are sufficiently strong cliches or forumlas? If it can be achieved, it has here...) the trio join up with Buck (Cuba Gooding, Jr.), a horse with severe delusions of grandeur, and Lucky Jack (Charles Haid), a severely unlucky jack-rabit, in dragging through the severly unfunny plot. The whole thing comes to a head through a confrontation with Slim, who is revealed to be, of course, a no-good varmint that hypnotizes cattle with his yodeling, steals them, then buys up the bankrupt homesteads using a false identity and the money he gets for selling the yodeling hypnotized cattle on the black market. (Can't belive what you just read? Good. I can't believe what I just wrote. In fact, I can't believe I'm doing this movie the service of a synopsis just so I can bash it properly...)

Can the cattle save their beloved Patch of Heaven? Will Buck acheive his dreams of greatness? Does the audience care?


"Even older kids will understand that Pixar does it so much better, not because of their computers but because of an intelligent attention to script and character and craft."-Ty Burr, BOSTON GLOBE

"The animation is perfunctory, the story is as uninvolving as it isdesperate, and the gags are flat (and occasionally flatulent)." -Terry Lawson, DETROIT FREE PRESS

"...More than a few discouraging words could be said about its dull animation. The once-great Mouse House needs to keep up with the Joneses."-Kit Bowen, HOLLYWOOD.COM


My intial reaction can be summed up in three words: Kill Me Now.

Or better yet, spare my life, but kill Will Finn and John Sanford, the writer/directors, and anyone else you can find in the cast and crew list.

'The death penalty?' You say. "A little harsh, isn't it?" (An indicator that you haven't yet seen the movie.) Not really. You see, I've bemoaned the loss of Disney's traditional 2D animation, which looks like it could be at an end after 44 movies and 68 years, loud and mournfully, just as I bemoaned the loss of the animated musical genre before it.

But now, I've met it's killers.

This, Disney's last animated feature, and a partial return to the tradition of musicals past, is the lamest, the most unfunny, and quite possibly the *WORST* animated feature I've ever seen. It makes the animated version of "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King" look like high art.

The jokes are stale and unfunny, either delivered far too sarcastically, far too self-aware of their own 'cleverness' (and I use the term lightly), or just so pathetic and cliched that they aren't funny to begin with.

The characters are cardboard cutouts of characters from other movies (in fact, I feel like they stole the main cast from Chicken Run and replaced Mel Gibson's 'outsider role' with Roseanne's. That's about the only change. Grace is Babs. Mrs. Calloway is Ginger. And any connection between this worthless flick and Chicken Run is a severe insult to Aardman Studios.) The rabbit is the cook from 'Atlantis.' About the only character who isn't familiar from another movie is the horse, Buck, and he's so irritatingly grating with every sentance that you won't find that to be a GOOD thing.

I kept count of exactly one funny moment, when the language barrier causes a Chinese imigrant to praise America, the land where people are given free cows, and about 4 more semi-funny moments. However, 5 potential laughs is not nearly enough to fill out even the measly 76-minute running time of wasted animation that is Home On The Range. (Add to that the fact that the DVD I recieved was stuck with French Subtitles on for every piece of printed media that appears on screen, and my experience was truly complete.)

If you don't want to see every single scene you've ever seen in an animated movie rehashed in a less clever way, from the 'quiet unassuming character shouts at everybody and they all stop, shocked' scene to the 'After a life or death situation the main characters blow up at each other and resolve to go their separate ways forever as soon as this is over (which must, of course, take place in the rain)' scene to the 'One of the heroes thinks that their annoying rival is dead/gone for good and starts eulogizing about them when they're really just fine and loving every word' scene, then don't waste your money. Even the yodeling cowboy (who goes from funny/clever to downright bizare and psychadelic whithin 30 seconds of his introduction) is not clever enough to save this movie- the only burning of DVDs that should have happened for this film ought to have taken place in an incinerator, along with the film's negatives.

My condolances to the many animators who wasted several years of their life on this, blackmarking their own resumes, and quite possibly doing in Walt Disney's 44-movie 2D legacy for good.


And let us pray that Disney may someday recover.