Number Forty Five: Home on the Range

Home on the Range

2004

“Home, home on the range, where the deer and the antelope play…” Every time I even hear of this movie, that song plays in my head, and stays stuck in my cranium for a very long time. This is only one of the problems with this movie.

Back in the Old West, there lived an infamous cow rustler named Alamida Slims. His name makes him sound like a girl, but he is in fact male. He caused many ranchers to go bankrupt by stealing all of their cattle. Without cattle, you can’t really have a cattle ranch now can you?

Maggie, a prize winning cow, was the last cow left on her ranch when Slims came through it. Now her owner cannot afford to keep her, so he sends her off to a little dairy farm called Patch of Heaven. While there Maggie tries to befriend the rest of the barnyard, but it is a little challenging for her to win over everyone in her new family. Particularly Mrs. Calloway, the strict leader of the farm. She does not care for Maggie’s loud outgoing ways. Basically she is a boring cow.

It doesn’t really matter anymore whether or not they get along, as the farm has gone bankrupt and will be sold at an auction, including all the livestock. Unless by some miracle Pearl, the owner, can come up with seven hundred and fifty dollars she’d need to pay the bank back.

What are they to do? Maggie knows! She decides to take Mrs. Calloway, Grace, the resident ditz of a cow, and go find Slims. Once found they’ll turn him into the law, and collect the reward money.

This here is why I dislike this movie. The plot is so udderly (Ha, because they are cows! Get it? I didn’t mean to type it that way, it just happened…) ridiculous. Three cows going out into the desert would never be able to survive, let alone capture a dangerous criminal. I don’t care if it’s a cartoon! That doesn’t excuse them from some forms of logic and reason!

Maybe if this film had some other redeeming qualities to make up for a brainless plot, it would have worked better. But it didn’t. All of the jokes were corny, or unoriginal, or just plain bad. None of the characters were really creative, just kind of flat and boring. Rosanne played Maggie, and the sound of her voice makes me want to scratch out my own eardrums. No movie should ever make someone desire to remove one of their body parts. That is just messed up.

Movie Watching Budd(y)(ies): No one likes any of these later Disney movies. I don’t really blame them.

Best Song: “Where barely is heard, a discouraging word…”

Best Part: The peglegged jack rabbit.