Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		3.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		2.5

Home on the Range Blu-ray Movie Review

"She'd better hurry up around that mountain, 'cause I can't take this much longer..."

Reviewed by Kenneth Brown July 3, 2012

For Walt Disney fans, the years following the Disney Renaissance -- which began in 1989 with The Little Mermaid and, by most accounts, ended in 1999 with Tarzan -- was a nightmare. Fantasia 2000 underwhelmed, Dinosaur disappointed, Atlantis arrived to mixed reviews and declining box office returns, Treasure Planet didn't dig deep enough, Brother Bear retread familiar ground, and Home on the Range... well, we'll come back to that one in a bit. Quality was in a frightening freefall, each new animated adventure seemed to lack more and more of that patented Uncle Walt magic, and the studio that single-handedly gave rise to traditional feature-film animation announced it was abandoning hand-drawn animation in favor of Pixar-esque CG productions. It was a slump that defined an entire era of Disney feature animation; a slump that allowed other animation studios to pull ahead while Disney languished at the back of the pack. Tragically, Disney's then-parting hand-drawn hurrah, box office bomb Home on the Range, wasn't just a failure on all fronts, it was, and remains, one of the worst, if not the worst, animated films in the studio's canon.

"Now, let's not play the shame and blame game. This is an organic problem, and there's a holistic solution."

Where to even start? The misfires are many, and only become more frustrating as Home on the Range rambles and ambles along. But it all really boils down to three easy-to-spot problems: fundamentals, fundamentals, and fundamentals. The story -- three bickering dairy cows (Roseanne Barr, Jennifer Tilly and Dame Judi Dench) set out to track down a notorious cattle rustler (Randy Quaid) in an attempt to save their farm from foreclosure -- is all at once overly convoluted and overly simplistic. (Figure that one out.) The characters are mismatched, mismanaged and miscast, and only a select few are likable, or for that matter memorable, in the least. (I count two: Cuba Gooding Jr.'s bucking bronco Buck and Charles Dennis' Eastwood-parody bounty hunter Rico.) The performances range from adequate to irritating, with Gooding Jr. and Dennis again stealing the show, and the songs, slapdash as they are, don't help. Nor does the talking animals' dialogue, which is cringe-worthy as written and downright grating as improvised. Barr is obnoxious to the point of dragging down the already subpar film, Tilly delivers dim-witted a bit too well, Dench is out of her league for perhaps the only time in her career, Quaid's voice is little more than a dead ringer for Johnny Depp's, and most every other chatty farm animal, bumbling cattle rustler, sinister city slicker, and well-meaning cowpoke gets lost in the crowd.

Say what you will about The Princess and the Frog, Disney's much-publicized 2009 return to traditional animation. It was both rooted in the studio's sweeping classics of yesteryear and built to prove that hand-drawn animation, when paired with an absorbing tale, still deserved a seat at the animated feature film table. Say what you will about post-Renaissance gems The Emperor's New Groove and Lilo & Stitch. Both offer an assortment of endearing heroes, villains and creatures, and both earn genuine laughs and cheers. Say too what you will about Atlantis and Treasure Planet, flawed as each one may be. If nothing else, they forged dazzling worlds and embarked on stirring journeys. Home on the Range, though, is little more than an afterthought; one that comes across as a direct-to-video shoulder-shrug. It doesn't build on what came before, represent a fitting farewell to hand-drawn animation, or put up much of a fight for the continued relevance or survival of the art form. It doesn't stir the heart or smack the funny bone, it doesn't elicit any strong emotions, and barely crawls across the finish line. And it certainly doesn't draw animation fans, young or old, into a fully realized Western wonderland or take them along on a wild ride. It merely runs through the motions, slinking toward the credits as if its days were already numbered when it began.

Did Disney see Home on the Range as the last straw? Did one film shove the studio into the arms of CG? Or did Disney already see the writing on the wall, as early as Atlantis, which languished in the shadow of Shrek, or Treasure Planet, which tried to give audiences the best of both worlds, hand-drawn and CG, and still struggled in the wake of Ice Age? The truth is the powers that be misunderstood the market and the rush to embrace CG movies. Audiences weren't bored with traditionally animated Disney films. They were tired of mediocre Disney films, and didn't have that many good films to choose from (especially with Pixar running circles around the Mouse House proper). CG animation didn't draw people to theaters because CG-animated films were always better; it drew people to theaters because it was shiny, new and was accompanied by stronger movies. Should Disney have pumped more resources into its CG animation department? Absolutely. Should it have boarded up the doors and windows on its traditional animation department, dismissing animators and abandoning veterans left and right? Absolutely not. Home on the Range failed because it's awful, not because it features hand-drawn animation. Awful story, awful writing, awful comedy, awful pacing, awful songs, and enough awful performances to bring the whole thing crashing down. Thank God for John Lasseter and his promotion. Without him and his love of the classics of old (and not so old), Disney hand-drawn animation would have been buried right alongside Home on the Range. And nothing deserves to be buried in such a putrid plot, least of all an institution as prominent and influential as traditional Walt Disney animation.

Home on the Range Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

It's rare that a Disney animated feature film arrives on Blu-ray with anything less than a first-rate, impeccably encoded presentation. (The Fox and the Hound being the most disappointing exception.) And while Home on the Range certainly looks the part at first glance -- crisp and colorful -- it suffers from far too many issues to trot out words like "perfect" or "stunning." So bad news first. Thin, at-times glaring edge halos haunt the animators' line art from beginning to end, aliasing is quite apparent (distracting even) on occasion, faint artifacting disrupts several color fills (watch Rico's overcoat closely), and banding, though slight and infrequent, pops up here and there. (The screenshot above showcases the worst of it all.) Otherwise, the studio's 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer moseys along without too much of a hitch. Art director David Cutler's warm Southwestern palette is full of life, primaries are cozy and cheerful, blacks are fairly inky, and contrast doesn't falter with the rising or setting of the sun. Detail doesn't waver either... except when the aforementioned anomalies rear their ugly heads. Pencil-textured lines and background brushstrokes are neatly defined (even though the combination of the textured line art and edge halos gives the 1080p image fits), and most of the animators' intentions are rendered to a reasonable fault. In the end, it's clear that Home on the Range could have looked every bit as good as Disney's finest. What isn't so clear is why it doesn't.

Home on the Range Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Disney's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track isn't upended by any technical mishaps, but the film's oft-front heavy sound design limits its impact. Dialogue is as clean and clear as a babbling brook, Alan Menken and Glenn Slater's music and songs fill the soundfield with lively country lyrics and rhythms, Alameda Slim's yodels are presented in all their oh-da-le oh-da-la joy, and the LFE channel lends heave and heft to every bucking bronco kick, cattle stampede, Mrs. Calloway temper tantrum, gunshot and booming buffalo stomp. The rear speakers are largely subdued -- again, by design -- but they're still given moments to shine (primarily when the dairy cows wander into a rowdy saloon, a cavernous mine or really anything other than an outdoor environment). The track isn't underwhelming by any means, though. It's just a bit ordinary and two-dimensional compared to some of Disney's more spirited mixes. On the whole, Home on the Range sounds better than it ever has or (presumably) ever will. Fans may be in short supply, but sonic proficiency is not.

Home on the Range Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary: Producer Alice Dewey and co-writers/co-directors Will Finn and John Sanford have a good ol' time watching Home on the Range but tend to gloss over too many aspects of the film's production and animation, settling for anecdotes and well-meaning laughs instead of a more meaningful discussion of what worked and what didn't.
• Trailblazers: The Making of Home on the Range (SD, 17 minutes): An overview of the production, from story development to character design, voice casting to performances, song-writing to singing, and from animation to the culmination of the whole shebang.
• Art Review (SD, 10 minutes): Art director David Cutler and background supervisor Cristy Maltese talk about their inspirations for the colorful look and feel of the film's Western environments, locales and clothing.
• Deleted Scenes (SD, 15 minutes): Four unfinished deleted scenes are included -- "Heroes, Villains & Cows," "Slim for President," "Coyote Chase" and "Meet Lucky Jack" -- as are co-directors' introductions to each.
• A Dairy Tale: The Three Little Pigs (SD, 3 minutes): An animated short narrated by Judi Dench.
• Music Video (SD, 3 minutes): "Anytime You Need a Friend," as performed by the Beu Sisters.
• Yodelmentary (SD, 3 minutes): Learn to yodel kids. Because that won't land you in any trouble.
• Joke Corral: Herd of Jokes (SD, 5 minutes): Then round out that yodeling with a string of bad jokes.

Home on the Range Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Home on the Range isn't just the product of a then-ailing traditional animation production house, it's one of the worst animated films in Disney's canon. (Is it hyperbolic to suggest it's one of the worst feature films in the history of animation? I'll let you mull that one over.) Unfortunately, its Blu-ray release sports a problematic video transfer and an unremarkable selection of special features. Its DTS-HD Master Audio track is much better, but only insofar as the film's sound design allows. Should Home on the Range find its way into your collection? That depends on whether or not you're a Walt Disney completist. If so, prepare to grin and bear your way through a middle-of-the-road Blu-ray release. If not, it's best to mosey on past and search out greener pastures.