This animated Western just wants to make you laugh and leave the theatre with a couple of Alan Menken's melodies lodged in your brain. Its main characters--three cows looking to save a ranch facing foreclosure--aren't the most memorable of creations, but there is a great yodeling villain and an old coot jackrabbit sidekick that would make Gabby Hayes proud.

The story has the trio of cows, Maggie, Mrs. Caloway and Grace, voiced by Roseanne Barr, Judi Dench and Jennifer Tilly, trying to capture a greedy outlaw named Alameda Slim (Randy Quaid), collect the reward money and save their beloved farm.

Alameda Slim is a varmint who rustles cattle with a hypnotising yodeling serenade. That puts our heroines at risk. Everybody wants Slim. A bounty hunter named Rico (Charles Dennis) and a karate-kicking horse named Buck (Cuba Gooding Jr.) are also on his trail.

Directors Will Finn and John Sanford maintain a brisk pace, and the movie has at least one bravura animation sequence, Alameda Slim's psychedelic yodeling roundup, weirdly fantastic and eye-popping.

The song, the wonderfully named Yodel-Adle-Eedle-Idle-Oo, is a toe-tapper, too. Besides introducing you to the setting and most of the characters, the song serves as a signpost to the movie's agreeably sunny vibe.