Spirit: L'indomptable

Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron is one of my favorite animated films of all time, and if not for the masterpiece that is The Prince of Egypt, I would even go so far as to declare it as my favorite from DreamWorks, at least of the hand-drawn ones. It is truly a testament to the power of animation as a form of visual storytelling. The animation is a perfect melding of both hand-drawn main characters and computer-generated backgrounds, and a lot of the story and character development is told mostly through the horses' facial expressions and body language without having any need to make them speak, save for the internal narration (which I'll get to in a second). And I also have to give it credit for its depiction of Native Americans, particularly with one of them and the strong relationship he forges with Spirit, as well as his own horse, Rain. There are, however, two aspects that keep me from putting Stallion of the Cimarron on the same level as Prince of Egypt, and those are, of course, Matt Damon's narration and Bryan Adams's songs. I have always felt conflicted about their usage. I completely understand why the narration and songs are there; to give some better context on Spirit's thoughts that could not be articulated as well through animation alone, and there are some moments where it works perfectly fine. But there are also many other moments where I felt it was rather unnecessary and they could have just let the visuals tell the story as is. But that's pretty much it, and it's not enough to keep it from being a great film, and honestly, a forgotten gem, in my opinion. It makes it all the more interesting that DreamWorks would come back to make a franchise out of it 15 years after its release.

Thus, we have this movie, Spirit Untamed, which is evidently based on a TV show streaming on Netflix called Spirit: Riding Free, which began in 2017. I am going to have to get this upfront and say that I have never seen any episodes of the show, but based on my research, it's more or less a complete reboot of the movie. The only thing it really has in common is that it has a horse named Spirit, and that's pretty much it. Now, I'm not opposed to the idea of taking a beloved property and going a completely new direction with it; as long as it's decent enough to be a worthy successor, I'm perfectly fine with that. Apparently, Riding Free is one of Netflix's most popular children's animated series, and that's probably why this movie ended up being greenlit. I had wanted to check this movie out at the theaters, but none of them held it long enough, so I ended up watching it on the small-screen through VOD. Since I knew that this was going to be a completely different take from Stallion of the Cimarron, I emptied my mind of any memory of that earlier movie and watched it looking for a completely unique experience. And that's exactly what I got, but unfortunately, for all the wrong reasons.

As I stated earlier, I watched this movie on my TV at home as opposed to seeing it in the theater, and honestly, I'm glad I did that instead, because the movie looks like that's where it belongs. As opposed to being done in DreamWorks's main studios, the animation for this movie was done at a much smaller studio based in Great Britain and it really shows here. The animation is not really bad per se, as the humans (and horses) are very expressive, and the color palette here is quite vibrant. There are even some places in which it looks quite nice, such as whenever there's a sunset, and in particular, a dream sequence where the girls ride across across the water reflecting the skies above. But with that said, it's certainly not on par with DreamWorks's other CG-animated features like Kung Fu Panda, How to Train your Dragon, and even Bee Movie (which I actually think is kind of underrated). The overall textures look so flat, and it doesn't have any of the grandeur as other DreamWorks movies. It's certainly better than the TV show, at least based on clips I've seen, but that's all I can really praise.

Although this is an adaptation of the Netflix show, the one thing that I thought was really strange was that the filmmakers didn't hire any of the show's voice actors to reprise their characters in the movie. Instead, they cast bigger names like Isabela Merced, Marsai Martin, Julianne Moore, Jake Gyllenhaal and Andre Braugher to take on these roles. I find this to be a very puzzling decision and definitely not one that worked for the film's advantage. Aside from Martin, Moore, and occasionally Braugher, the voice acting leaves quite a bit to be desired. It feels like they only did one or two takes and it really could have benefitted from casting the voice actors from the show. It's far from cringeworthy, but the cast members just didn't sound like they were in there, living the moment. And that's going to be problematic, because if the voice acting is subpar, it will be harder to get invested in the characters.

Now we finally get to the meat of the film. The movie focuses on the exploits of Lucky Prescott, who moves to a new town in the American Wild West, reuniting with her estranged father. While she's there, she encounters a horse attempting to be broken by local horse wranglers, who SPOILER ALERT: are later revealed to be the bad guys. Lucky befriends said horse who shares her own free spirit, despite her father disapproving of her riding him, having lost his wife in a riding accident during a performance. Together, along with two other girls, Lucky and Spirit embark on an adventure to save his herd from the wranglers. This alone presents a lot of fascinating concepts, and one that could result in a really good film, maybe not necessarily as great as Stallion of the Cimarron, but certainly could be a worthy successor. If the cards were played right, they might even have something along the lines of How to Train your Dragon (I have not seen that movie, but it's often regarded as one of DreamWorks best films). The problem, unfortunately, is that the movie plays it way too safe; it doesn't take any chances or risks at all with it, and as a result, becomes another generic "girl and her horse story." None of the elements that could have led to a compelling film are really explored and even the mother's death in the opening scene is really downplayed, and thus makes the film rather boring. But that doesn't mean the film has nothing that works in its favor. What I find is the best aspect is the friendship that forms between Lucky and the two other girls, Pru and Abigail. Though the characters are a bit stock, the relationship between them does feel strong and genuine. They play off each other quite well and there are even moments where it can be rather comedic. And though the movie is pretty dull overall, there are some intense scenes where the girls have to trek dangerous paths in order to save Spirit's herd and there is a rather suspenseful climax in rescuing the horses trapped aboard a departing ship. There is also a nice message about how you can let your spirit ride free as long as you got the courage in you. Sadly, that message is really undermined since the movie doesn't seem to have any courage in exploring these elements. There's definitely a real irony in the movie's title. The movie is called Spirit Untamed, but the entire film was too tame, and thus lacked little spirit whatsoever. Again, I don't know if the Netflix series does a better job at pulling off this concept because I have never seen it, and maybe it does. But based on what I saw in this movie, I'm not going to have high expectations if I ever decide to renew my subscription and give it a watch.

To conclude, this is far from one of DreamWorks worst films; I definitely wouldn't put it in the bottom five, but as it is, it's one of the company's most forgettable; I actually had to look up a couple of other reviews to help bolster some of my points, because I forgot so much about it. There is nothing really awful about it, but at the same time, there's nothing that good about it either. It really does feel like that this should have been released just straight to streaming service or even straight to DVD. Even if I never saw the earlier film, I still wouldn't recommend it unless you have kids who really love horses. Even stranger is that this movie is rated PG for action scenes, but Stallion of the Cimarron's entire tone was very mature, thus the action scenes were grittier and more intense. And yet that movie has a G rating. If you are looking for a good animated horse movie for your kids, I would highly recommend saddling up with that one instead.

Young kids are probably too young to notice but this movie is another attempt to push the woke agenda. White men are bad and stupid, everyone else is great!

Lots of girl power rah rah rah stuff too. Animation os pretty average. Jokes are meh. Avoid.

I don't understand why this studio had to remove and basically change the original story of Spirit. And to complete remove Native Americans and downgrade the story is not okay.

Really disappointing movie. It was just bad. Everything about it was bad.

As the old saying goes, if it isn't broken, don't fix it. The movie would have been much more enjoyable if the same animation style of the Netflix series was used, perhaps created a new story stemming from one or some of the story lines used in the series, and used the same voice talent from the series. Nevertheless, my daughter enjoyed it very much, even though she also had many of the same feelings or reactions that I did.