Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002, DVD)

My fianc e said to me I always cry during Disney movies . Well guess what I told her, this is not a Disney movie! And yet better I tell you, is that it has the same charm and same emotional attachment that the great Disney movies had but this is a Dreamworks presentation. A company that with Spirit makes it mark that great animation movies don t have to have animals talking or annoying sidekicks, to be enjoyable for adults and kids alike.

There are quite a few things to like about Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron and quite a few things to dislike.

Let s start with the dislike. First, I don t care how much he croons or how special his lyrics are trying to interpret the mood of the movie but listening to Bryan Adam s time after time inject his pop ballads at the worse time into the movie got really annoying. What the filmmakers may have forgotten, is that we have already had to listen to Elton John, Phil Collins, and Sting do much the same and although their soundtracks may have sold a few million audiences grew increasingly tired with such a design. For a time we thought those days were behind us. But with Spirit those days are back. Each and every time when a character is about to express something deeply felt it s interrupted by a Bryan Adams song.

Breathe Lynus, breathe!

But, that s all I really disliked with Spirit. I found the rest of the movie, from the fact that the animals don t speak yet convey facial emotions (okay, human facial emotions on a horse!) and that most of the movie is really about one animals spirit infused with human spirit be it good or bad, was welcomed in the field of animated movies that normally fall into such trappings.

I didn t even mind Matt Damon has a constant narrator, who s voice was meant to represent the vocal spirit of Spirit. There was nothing in his delivery that went beyond the character or turned the character into a child s pony. If you didn t have an ear to recognize famous celebrity voices then you would have never known and the narrator would have fallen into obscurity much like the guy who narrates A Christmas Story.

Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron begins with a young horse being born. Like most, he stumbles to get on his feet but once there he prances around in total glee at the blue sky, clean air, and free land. There are a few humorous scenes tacked on showing Spirit slowly growing up until the movie puts all four hoofs in place and sets in stone that Spirit is a leader. He looks out for his herd. He fights off enemies. He s a male horse.

Everything is perfect until he meets a male man. (read that again! Male man, not mail man!)

At this point, Spirit s spirit is to not be broken. Which means no matter how many ropes the white man uses to try to force him into submission he won t allow himself to be broken. But like Spirit, a man, a Colonel/James Cromwell won t give up either. The movie makes Spirit s life pretty glum by watching him go without food or water for three days. By watching him get roped around his neck and thrown to the ground and dragged back to a man s fortress.

We come to hate the man. Actually, we come to hate the white man. For he uses horses to charge after villains (Indians), uses horses to pull a heavy train up a mountainous hill, and worse abuses horses because he can and thinks it will make them more obedient and honest to their white cause.

But soon, Spirit meets Little Creek/(voiced by) Daniel Studi. An Indian boy trapped much like he is. And, together, eventually, they reach an agreement/friendship and overcome evil and live free as it should. I m stopping here, to not give away the whole movie!

As for the animations, Spirit is a big departure from Dreamwork s previous endeavor, Shrek. There are a few uses of computer animation, but overall most of the artistic approach is left for hand-crafted, old-fashioned, simple animation. And, it doesn t matter. Unlike Shrek, or Antz, or Toy Story (1 and 2), or Monsters Inc. the art of Sprit doesn t rely on the balance between story and artistic creation yet on story alone. The art here is simple to bring more focus to the life of the story, which is the heart of the movie.

The sad thing is, I think most kids will be bored by this movie. That is, at least older kids in the spectrum of when we talk about animated movies and kids. Sure, there are some laughs they will get. Sure, there s plenty of action and intense scenes that will make them clinch their pillows even more but what s lacking (thankfully!) is the over-the-top humor that has found its way into more recent movies that they can easily associate with. I know this, because I know the young kids I know in my own life. No more than two seconds after seeing the movie they d be out prancing around like Donkey from Shrek. They d be out roaring like a Lion King beating Scar until their victim yells Mom! . But with Spirit, they may prance around like a horse for a few seconds but there is nothing for them to associate with unless they associate with wisdom, loyalty, and freedom and consider that more important than the other movies they can and are allowed to, act out.

As for parents Spirit is a great movie. Yes, it is absent of all the adult humor that we catch in hopes that little Tommy doesn t. Plus, the movie has an idealism to itself that deep down and perhaps dark inside we d want to express to our children and even to ourselves. Hopefully. The funny thing is, Spirit is a family movie much like one would expect from Walt Disney himself only problem is, this wasn t made by Disney and not many movies that Disney himself first created are made by his business he created, today.

Overall I enjoyed Spirit for its spirit.