Home On The Range

BY GENE SEYMOUR | Staff Writer

A trio of clever cows (left to right) Mrs. Caloway (voice of Judi Dench), Maggie (voice of Roseanne Barr), and Grace (voice of Jennifer Tilly) take it on the hoof to help save the Patch of Heaven dairy farm from foreclosure in Walt Disney Pictures' new animated comedy, "Home on the Range." (AP Photo)

(PG). The newest Disney animated feature is an Old West spoof in which a trio of cows (voiced by Roseanne Barr, Judi Dench, Jennifer Tilly) pool their mismatched personalities to save their dairy farm from a land- grabbing outlaw (Randy Quaid). Conventional stuff, relatively modest, yet unapologetically brash and amusing. Other voices include Cuba Gooding Jr., Steve Buscemi. Directed by Will Finn, John Sanford. 1:17 (mildly crude banter). At area theaters.

For all its allusions to broad-shouldered movie Westerns of the CinemaScope era, "Home on the Range" seems somewhat modest in concept when compared with such Disney musical comedies of the '90s as "The Little Mermaid," "Beauty and the Beast" or "Aladdin." It doesn't even have the spunk and whimsy of 2002's "Lilo & Stitch." It seems, on the surface anyway, like yet another by-the-numbers effort by Disney to replicate .glories of the fast-receding recent past.

But at least this time around, someone remembered to bring along a sense of humor. While no one would mistake the writing in "Home on the Range" for Shaw, Wilde or even Mel Brooks, directors Will Finn and John Sanford season their script with sight gags that go off like corn popping and wisecracks crisp enough for family consumption, if just light enough on the salt. If you insist on precedents, think of 1997's "Hercules," one of the more underrated features in the Disney canon, which, as with "Range," displayed an elementally angular visual style and an infectiously breezy narrative that straddles the line separating brash from crass.

The animals are the only people -- no, wait, that doesn't sound right. The animals, more than the people, are the ones with any pluck and sense in "Range." The pluckiest is a "show cow" named Maggie, who speaks with the voice of the Artist Once Again Known as Roseanne Barr. She's the newest tenant of the Little Patch of Heaven" dairy farm, sharing the cow barn with sweet, daft Grace (Jennifer Tilly) and crusty, no-nonsense Mrs. Caloway (Judi Dench).

Their bucolic life is under siege by a varmint named Alameda Slim (Randy Quaid), who's been rustling the surrounding cattle farmers out of business and then, in disguise, buying up their depleted holdings at auction. Maggie thinks it would be a wonderful idea if she, Grace and Mrs. Caloway went after Slim on their own and collect the $750 reward -- just enough for their owner, Pearl, to buy her way out of bankruptcy. Not only do members of this bovine posse have to contend with the elements and each other, they're in competition with the local sheriff's impetuous horse, Buck (Cuba Gooding Jr.), who's managed to somehow learn cutting-edge martial arts in the old frontier.

It's all too tempting, given Disney's recent, much-publicized adventures in the financial world, to wonder if there's metaphoric significance in a bad guy who's out to acquire and devour every enterprise he can see. Best to put it out of one's mind and be glad that composer Alan Menken is back on the Disney payroll with an amiable score and some witty songs written with lyricist Glenn Slater.