:: Venting Insanity ::

:: Sunday, April 13, 2003 ::

movie review
I watched Spirit, Stallion of the Cimarron today. We've had the DVD for like a month and a half... ^^;;; I just hadn't watched it.

Anyway...

The animation was amazing! I was watching the special features, and the artist said it's extremely difficult to draw a horse well, let alone animate one on the screen. It was great! They used a combination of computer and hand drawn effects, which is something that's been around almost regularly now since Beauty and the Beast and "Blue Submarine No. 6". The landscapes they created, as well as some of the "camera shots" they were able to do were fabulous.

The story was very "feel good ending". Spirit is a wild horse, born on the western plains of the U.S. He ends up being captured by horse wranglers and goes through a series of people and groups that try to break him in and use him for their own purposes. First, he's "recruited" into the US Army. Then, he spends some time at an indian camp, where he meets up with (and falls in love with) a mare that belonged to one of the indians. He then ends up as a work horse on the railroads. Each time, this wild stallion makes a spectacular escape, sometimes aided by someone, sometimes aiding someone else (whether human or beast). It's a happy ending with some very sad parts, and it really shows a struggle for the horse to make it through and not give up hope on seeing his home again.

While there was not a lot of dialog (the horses don't talk in this one, unlike most Disney films), Matt Damon (The Bourne Identity, The Legend of Bagger Vance) narrates the story as the thoughts of Spirit throughout his tale. While the constant horse noises to show communication between the various horses can get a bit frustrating at times, there's enough narration and human dialog interspersed throughout the movie so that your not sitting there listening to a lot of animal noises.