DAC 45: Home on the Range

Home on the Range - 6.9/10

I've never seen this one, and honestly never really had any interest in seeing it. And for once, I wasn't wrong. Was it a terrible movie? No, but I expect better from Disney.

The story has been done a thousand times: we gotta save the farm! Let's catch a bad guy! Ooh, what a zany cast of characters, a bunch of animals with kooky personalities. It seemed more like a cartoon than a feature film. And some parts of it were just weird - the villain's song, for instance, could give Pink Elephants a run for its money.

I think the most telling thing about this film is that I couldn't get invested in any of the characters. I was more interested in trying to figure out the actors portraying them than I was in anything that was going on. Also, some of it was just kind of dumb. The ranch owner refuses to sell any of her animals to save her farm because they're "family", and yet she has pigs on her farm. Tell me, for what reason would any farm keep pigs, and is that something you would do to your family?

The animation was decent, but the art style didn't really grab me. Again, it was pretty cartoony. I will say some of the humor played well, though on occasion it seemed kind of forced. This is the kind of bland, formulaic, lack of effort that made The Aristocats so dull. The only thing keeping this one above that film was that it at least had some style, and moved along at a decent pace.

I probably would have enjoyed it a little more as a kid, since that was clearly the target audience (though they do have a few hidden "for the folks" jokes in there - again, pretty forced), but as it stands now, it's probably not one I'll ever watch again.