Home on the Range is set in the Old West, and centers on a mismatched trio of dairy cows—brash, adventurous Maggie; prim, proper Mrs. Calloway; and ditzy, happy-go-lucky Grace.
Aiding them in their quest is Lucky Jack, a feisty, peg-legged rabbit, and a selfish horse named Buck, eagerly working in the service of Rico, a famous bounty hunter, who seeks the glory for himself.
Home on the Range premiered at the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles on March 21, 2004, and was released in the United States on April 2.
The cows continue their search in the hopes of capturing Slim before Buck, until they lose the trail during a flash flood and have a falling out, with Mrs. Calloway believing Maggie only wants revenge and Patch of Heaven would be better off without her.
With Lucky Jack’s help, the cows discover Slim converted the mine into his hideout and stole cattle from his former patrons to render them unable to support their land.
When the subsequent auctions occur, he then disguises himself as respectable businessman "Yancy O'Dell" to buy their land using the money he makes from selling off the stolen cattle.
Learning Rico works for Slim, a devastated Buck helps the cows fight him, setting the stolen cattle free in the process.
The three cows, along with Barry, Bob, and Junior, celebrate with a square dance as Lucky Jack and Jen finish recounting the story and we see that Mrs. Calloway, Grace and the rest of the farm animals won prizes as show livestock in the State Fair.
"[4] The initial story involved a young boy from the Far East whose father owns a railroad and sends his son to the Western United States to teach him maturity.
Building on the idea, fellow story artists Sam Levine, Mark Kennedy, Robert Lence, and Shirley Pierce developed a new storyline.
Following a suggestion by Alan Menken, Alameda Slim was reconceived into a cattle huster who used his yodeling talents to hypnotize and abscond with the herd.
[7] In February 1998, Alan Menken had signed a long-term agreement with the Walt Disney Studios to compose songs and/or scores for animated and live-action films.
lang, Randy Quaid, Bonnie Raitt, Tim McGraw, and The Beu Sisters along with the film's score composed by Alan Menken.
The website's consensus reads: "Though Home on the Range is likeable and may keep young children diverted, it's one of Disney's more middling titles, with garish visuals and a dull plot.
Club, praised the film describing it as "a sweet, raucously funny, comic Western that corrects a glaring historical injustice by finally surveying the Old West through the eyes of cows rather than cowboys.
"[25] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 2+1⁄2 stars out of 4, saying that "A movie like this is fun for kids: bright, quick-paced, with broad, outrageous characters.
"[26] Claudia Puig of USA Today wrote favorably in her review that "Home on the Range is a throwback to old Disney cartoons: fun, rather than message-laden, with broad humor and entertaining action.
[28] Elvis Mitchell of The New York Times criticized the weak comedy writing that "Unrestrained energy is hardly a bad thing for animation — the best cartoons are built on the contradictory pursuit of meticulously arranged anarchy—but they never seem needy, or desperate for laughs, as Home on the Range does.
"[29] Similarly, Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan claimed "Home on the Range may be acceptable on reflection, but its formulaic desire to mix wisecracks for adults with pratfalls for kids is feeling thin, and its overall air of frantic hysteria does not wear well either.
"[30] Michael Wilmington of The Chicago Tribune noted "Satirizing the movie Western can make for a great cartoon, as it does in Jiri Trnka's brilliant 1949 Czech short Song of the Prairie, a puppet version of Stagecoach.
[32] Following the disappointing box office weekend, financial analysts predicted that Disney would be forced to write-down the production costs, which totaled more than $100 million.