Eleven years after Angel and sixteen years after Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, Charisma Carpenter continues to be actively involved in movies and in A Horse Tale, as lead star, she finds herself in this Christmas holiday romance movie that while very typical of all the mass produced, holiday-hyped movies, this one is a bit different and refreshing for a change. It's not that its really a dramatic, independent movie, not by a long shot, but the scriptwriter, Lori Twichell, in her apparently only screenplay, has developed a plot and dialogue that refuses to fall into the stereotypical, mundane performances that copy each other year after year. While the overall plot flows like the rest of the holiday film turnout, the dialogue and acting never quite fits the same mold of those other movies. The drama is muted just a bit so that the story actually reflects much more genuine if not overly dramatic outcomes but instead reveals thoughtful and more resonating emotional substance. By doing so, this movie provides the audience a more realistic and observant point of view that is even more captivating for its willingness to provide a more authentic, naturalistic look into real relationships and conflicts. Except for the more typical black and white evil bankers like have been portrayed since It's A Wonderful Life (1946), all the characters do well by the script. And the script and plot also take time to reveal a bit more reflection and plot development even towards the end, when it would have much easier and cheaper to just end production, save some money, and go home with fewer traditional ending sequences. It appears that Charisma Carpenter is very comfortable in her career and her performances, who seemingly has not aged (maybe having hung around Angel, the vampire too long) developing her own persona on screen and working well together with the staple of the Christmas male star of many holiday movies, Patrick Muldoon, who is among the most prolific of holiday stars. Somehow he continues to portray the same character over and over again in all these movies without actually coming off boring or mundane being seen again and again and again. He's kind of like the male Christmas character version of Kevin Costner's action, adventure male character that we have seen again and again in many of his movies. Together, Carpenter and Muldoon are given a solid refreshing script along with possibly some discretion to improvise some of their scenes to make an enjoyable, if not classic, holiday movie experience. Finally, there is a fascinating use of roughly two different photographic, camera presentations in this movie, one the polished, expensive film technique and the second, hand-held video camera with its more jerky, raw authentic look which is somewhat rare to see in movies. A well-deserved seven out of ten, not more but only because this movie remains confined in its rigid holiday movie formula and doesn't break dramatically outside of the box with daring, risky, startlingly original, ground-breaking theater. However, A Horse Tale could likely be an
