Dir.
Will Finn, John Sanford, 2004, USA, 76 mins
Voices:
Roseanne Barr, Judi Dench, Jennifer Tilly, Cuba Gooding Jr, Randy Quaid, Sam J. Levine, Steve Buscemi
Home on the Range is Disney's latest animated feature film, and also, reportedly, its last. With the increasing dominance and popularity of computer-animation from Dreamworks and the Disney breakaway company Pixar, the conventional hand-drawn techniques that made Disney such a formidable empire is being mistakenly abandoned in the belief that audiences are no longer interested. However, with the critical and commercial successes of hand-drawn films such as Belleville Rendezvous and Spirited Away over the last couple of years, it seems that Disney, once considered the bar with which other animation were judged by, is now content on blaming the tools rather than the work produced. Disney has been releasing second-rate fare recently, from The Emperor's New Groove and Atlantis: The Lost Empire, to Treasure Planet and the critically mauled Brother Bear. But while it seems as though Dreamworks and Pixar can do no wrong, it was not so long ago that Disney was churning out a string of non-stop hits - Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, and Tarzan to name but a few. With Home on the Range it seems as though the company has either finally run out of confidence or have decided that there is no point trying to stay in the competition.
Set during the Wild West, the story follows Maggie (Barr), a show cow who finds herself given to a dairy farm after her owner loses everything when the feared and notorious cattle rustler Alameda Slim (Quaid) mysteriously steals his herd. The dairy farm, called Patch of Heaven, is a harmonious place where the farm animals merrily help the owner, Pearl (Cook), with her daily chores, while singing and dancing the hours away. When Pearl is told that she may lose the farm unless she can quickly come up with the $750 she owes in debt, Maggie comes up with a plan to save the day. Along with her two new cow friends, the prim and proper Mrs Caloway (Dench), and the floaty hippy Grace (Tilly), they set out to capture Alameda Slim for the $750 reward. As one character says later in the film, "bovine bounty-hunters, now I've seen everything!" Of course, this character may have missed the barn-dancing chickens, the rabbit with a wooden leg, and the kung-fu performing horse.
Given a PG-13 rating in the States for some of the racier lines, there is a hint of a promise that Disney may have grown up a touch. When we first meet Maggie, we are presented with a shot in which her udders are clearly on show. She turns to the audience and states, "yeah they're real. Quit staring!" However, the promise is not followed through, with the film reverting instead to tiresome slapstick and burp jokes, and it is difficult to see any real appeal for grown-ups.
While directors Finn and Sanford claim they wanted to return to Disney's earlier simplicity of form and content, what is left out is any depth, emotion, or any sense of involvement. All the actors seem to be having a good time delivering their lines and manage to bring some life into some of the jokes, but the audience is not given enough reason to care about them. Without any drama, suspense, or even a tug on the heart-strings, why should we care whether they manage to save the farm, or whether Maggie is accepted by the other farm animals, or even if Alameda Slim is captured or not? The songs by Disney-favourite Alan Mencken and Glenn Slater are entertaining enough during the film itself but easily forgettable. The look of the film is also fairly flat and dimensionless, resorting to a very angular drawing style, and a muted colour scheme. In fact, Home on the Range seems as though it would be more suited for the direct-to-video market. If it is true that Disney are planning to pack up the pencils and ink pots, it would be such a shame that the company that gave us Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Bambi, and The Jungle Book would want to leave on such an average painted-by-numbers low-note.
Angus Macdonald |
