Home on the Range
Short description
Home on the Range is set on a small dairy farm called Patch of Heaven, where the animals live peacefully until the place falls into financial trouble and a ruthless outlaw named Alameda Slim schemes to take the land for himself. Three cows, Maggie, Mrs. Caloway and Grace, refuse to lose their home and lead a mixed group of farm animals in a campaign against him. A karate-trained stallion named Buck and a collection of other creatures join the effort, which turns into a series of schemes and chases across the American West.
The film was directed by Will Finn and John Sanford, who also wrote the screenplay, and produced by Alice Dewey for Walt Disney Pictures and Walt Disney Feature Animation. It was the first of two features each director made, followed years later by Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return for Finn and Dragons: Dawn of the Dragon Racers for Sanford. The voice cast includes Roseanne Barr, Judi Dench, Jennifer Tilly, Cuba Gooding Jr., Steve Buscemi and G.W. Bailey, among 52 credited cast members and 71 credited crew.
Released in April 2004, the film runs 76 minutes. With a budget of 110 million US dollars it earned about 145 million worldwide, a modest return. Audiences rate it 5.4 out of 10 on IMDb from roughly 29,000 votes and 6.1 out of 10 on TMDB from about 2,200 votes. A critics' rating of 5.7 out of 10 from 127 reviews places critical and audience response close together.
What's left behind the scenes
- Initially, screenwriters Will Finn and John Sanford intended to make an animated film based on the tale of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Maggie the Cow (voiced by Rosanne Barr) was originally conceived as a deaf girl. Michael Eisner, from the upper echelons of The Walt Disney Company, immediately rejected this idea, stating that parents wouldn't take their children to a cartoon depicting the killing of children. Finn and Sanford had to rewrite the script, retaining only isolated elements of the Pied Piper story.
- According to some reports, the film grossed only half of its production cost, which became one of the reasons why The Walt Disney Company discontinued the production of traditionally animated films (i.e., "hand-drawn") for five years. In 2006, at the initiative of professional animators from Disney and other studios, plans began to be considered to return to the previous practice of producing and releasing traditionally animated films in theaters, but the only hand-drawn film shown in theaters afterward was "The Princess and the Frog" (2009).
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