Avis Metacritic

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.

Old-style animation slows down after a snappy start, but it's lively enough to keep kids from fidgeting too much.

The conservatively cheery artistic style suggests that the animation team has been reading Sundance merchandise catalogs.

The film skews young, to be sure, and it isn't as memorable as the new Disney classics of the early 1990s, but there's still plenty here to hold the interest of viewers of all ages: delightful performances (particularly by Dench, plowing Angela Lansbury terrain), zinging comic dialogue and a soundtrack that's a wealth of sonorous riches.

Isn't good satire or good slapstick. It does have those lyrical, catchy Menken tunes, and the film perks up whenever Raitt or lang sing one of them. But much of this movie is deadly.

What it really is is an unapologetic cartoon, a harum-scarum endeavor that's so comically frantic it wears you out as much as it entertains.

This amiable, Western-themed animated effort from the Walt Disney Co. is a clear attempt to return to the more lighthearted cartoon style that was so prevalent before its onslaught of stately musical epics.

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. The film seems hungrier for a pat on the head than a chuckle.

Should make about $750, which is how much they need to save the farm, but a little less than Disney CEO Michael Eisner needs to save his job.

Comes across less as a fully realized work of storytelling than as a commercial for a corporation whose goal of entertainment has been replaced by that of making money.