Home on the Range

Disney’s 2004 release was based off the popular country song “Home on the Range,” with the film taking the name as well. Starring Roseanne Barr, Judi Dench, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Randy Quaid, Jennifer Tilly, and Steve Buscemi, the film didn’t do very well at the box office. In fact, it lost $6.1 million.

Set in the Old West, a trio of dairy cows, Maggie (Barr), Mrs. Calloway (Dench) and Grace (Tilly) must capture Alameda Slim (Quaid), an infamous cattle rustler for his bounty in order to save their idyllic farm from closure.

Despite Home on the Range having all the necessary ingredients for a fun movie, it really isn’t. The plot is pretty dull and the characters are mostly unlikeable. On the other hand, it does have some pretty catch music.

The film really shouldn’t be as boring as it is, considering it’s a trio of cows against a cattle rustler with a hypnotic yodel. But what follows is a road trip movie containing cows with cows that can never seem to agree on anything. And the villain is just some guy buying up plots of land legitimately for revenge. He steals the cows the other people buy up to get the money back. It should be interesting but it’s so underdeveloped it’s not.

The characters are all also completely one dimensional and none of them really go through any sort of development. Maggie is the boisterous one, Calloway is the prim and proper one, and Grace is the kooky one. Buck the horse is also one of those characters with a personality that no one wants to be around, and that could be fairly good, but it doesn’t really end up anywhere.

However, there are some good songs in the film. k. d. lang sings a  bouncy song, and it’s eventual reprise, called “Little Patch of Heaven,” and the chorus has a good song in the style of the chorus type songs from other westerns.

Home on the Range is one of those movies that really should have been a lot better. The story was underdeveloped and the characters were one sided. And while the music was pretty good, music itself can’t save a film. 

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