SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2002 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): **
DreamWorks's new animated movie, SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON, features Tobey Maguire as the voice of the mustang named Spirit and Glenn Close and James Garner as the voices of Spirit's parents.
Just kidding, although I wish I weren't.
Trying to preclude a Mr. Ed type of silliness, DreamWorks carefully avoided letting the horses talk. (Spirit does, however, manage to have human intelligence and sometimes superhuman strength.) While I admire the studio's dedication to their principles, the results are less than impressive and sometimes downright boring. John Fusco's thin script is certainly no SHREK. The minimal plot, which never manages to get in gear, relies on traditional Western themes like the wild horse who almost can't be tamed. If you like seeing guys being thrown from horses, you'll have plenty of opportunities to laugh at their pratfalls. Since the movie plays like a Saturday morning cartoon, except much slower and three times longer, you can expect some significant amount of fidgeting among the smallest members of the audience.
Narrated by Matt Damon, who tells the story from Spirit's perspective, the movie concerns a wild mustang named Spirit who is drafted against his will by the army. James Cromwell voices a colonel who "tames" Spirit, and Daniel Studi voices Little Creek, the Native American who steals Spirit from the army. Both the colonel and Little Creek use Spirit for basic transportation, but the story takes great pains to point out how Little Creek treats him more humanely.
Watching traditionally animated movies like SPIRIT, one begins to think about what people must have thought of silent movies after talkies came out. Once you've seen computer generated animation, hand drawn movies pale in comparison just as silent films pale in comparison, to talkies. Even so, if SPIRIT had had a script as bright as SHREK's or THE LION KING's, the limitations of the hand drawings would have been less noticeable.
Let me boldly state the obvious, even if most people are reluctant to admit it. Please bring back the talking animals and please give the animators computers to produce their drawings.
SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON runs a long 1:22. It is rated G and would be acceptable for kids of all ages.
My son Jeffrey, age 13, gave it **. He said that it had good music and some nice scenes like the train explosion, but he complained that there wasn't much of a plot. Having a completely different opinion, my wife adored the film and cried at the end.
The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, May 24, 2002. In the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC and the Century theaters.
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