Home on the Range

Day 107 - 4/17/09 - Movie #105

BEFORE: I've been staying up much too late this week, watching Westerns...if I miss my sleep window, I'm wide awake at 3 am - which is making it tough to get enough sleep before I have to get up and go to work. I'll switch over to some shorter animated films - I do have some more Westerns to watch, but I won't have them dubbed to DVD until this weekend. This film was one of Disney Co.'s last traditionally cel-animated features, if I remember right.

THE PLOT: To save their farm, the resident animals go bounty hunting for a notorious outlaw.

AFTER: I'm usually pretty good at identifying voices in animated films, and of course I recognized Roseanne and Jennifer Tilly - but I didn't recognize Cuba Gooding Jr. as Buck the horse, and I could have sworn that was R. Lee Ermey as the goat - nope, it was Joe Flaherty. And Judi Dench as an old cow? Odd casting, or spot on? There's way too many slapsticky "animals fall down into the mud" moments - but things take a turn for the better when Randy Quaid appears as Alameda Slim, who rustles cattle by hypnotizing them with his surreal yodeling. (I swear...) Any charm, however, is negated by the most confusing chase sequence I've ever seen - if I couldn't keep track of it, how could a kid be expected to?

RATING: 3 out of 10 blue ribbons