Writer: John Fusco
Directors: Kelly Asbury, Lorna Cook
Studio: Dreamworks Animation
Studio: Dreamworks Animation
Watched on: 29/12/2020
Review contains ***SPOILERS*** for Spirit (AKA Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron)
Ratings:
Am I even that glad I've seen this? Shit was weird and it feels like nothing even happened in it. It was just 90 minutes of nothing, really.
Why did the Horses not speak? They were humanoid enough with all the emotions and expressions, so them exclusively neighing felt really strange - especially with the spoken voiceover for Spirit's thoughts, which came at seemingly completely random times.
As mentioned, there wasn't really an overarching story or narrative. It was more like just recalling some events that happened in this horse's life, with some of them kinda relating to each other but not really. Like the US commander guy letting him go was a good end to that little sub-plot but the rest were just a middle or an end with no hook in the beginning. Was Spirit's wish to find a partner? That would make meeting Rain make sense. Was his wish to bond with the 'two-legged's? That would give meaning to his thing with that native dude. Or was his destiny to free all the horses taken as slaves? Because that would have at least given all his actions in the training camp and the railroad some significance.
Also, there were a few moments where the mood of the music, styling and tone just did not match what was happening on screen. Like the scene where Spirit first gets chained up for his shoes and stuff; that's a really horrible moment for this horse and I was feeling terrified for him... but they made this a silly, comedic back and forth with the shoemaker. Maybe that was edited to be more upbeat because it's a kids' film but that would just mean the film had no clear angle it was coming from. It also suffered from the same thing that Treasure Planet did, with the weird rock music interludes, instead of characters actually breaking out into song. That was weird and only added to the confusion of the horses neighing. If they'd gone completely with no words (like Wall-E did and like I Lost My Body should have done), I think it could have been improved by having a clear identity but also pushing the animation to something amazing.
The animation is a bit of a mixed bag but sadly its high point isn't actually that high. The clear strong point is the traditional animation of the horses. The running motions are believable and really make you feel the force of the animal and they also managed to translate all these animal movements into coherent, understandable emotional gestures too. I feel with though that it shows they did their research and design incredibly well beforehand but then didn't take it anywhere special after that. Once they'd nailed down the porportions and anatomy, all the animators were given the tools but no one took it to any heights that were really impressive. Then the bad stuff. The weird, lifeless CGI horses that have no personality or believability. They're really robotic and untextured. The end result really disrupts the feeling of being out on these great planes, because these weird 3D running blobs just remind you that this is not the natural world. They also weirdly used the same for the american soldiers sometimes. And speaking of the great planes, there was some pretty poor CG environments, which felt really artificial, especially when used in conjunction with such a heavy parallax effect.
Basically, I can see why this film isn't really a classic. So plenty learned from it.
