Albion: The Enchanted Stallion

Beautiful movie! Great for the kids. Very sweet story. My daughter has rewatched this so many times. It's so nice to see something like princess bride being made these days. The cast was fantastic, I really enjoyed seeing John Cleese whom I didn't even recognize initially. Jennifer looked beautiful and was perfectly cast. Liam mcintyre was a stand out for me as well.

A suggestion to the "movie critics" here: when you intentionally choose to watch a film made for children and younger teens, it's a little goofy to rate it low because it turns out to be a film for children and young teens-- and doesn't meet your personal expectations of cerebral cinema. Seriously.

This is a terrific film that is well-written, well-directed, and above all well-acted. Every actor in this film pulls of his/her part with the perfect mixture of seriousness and humor. From the heroine to the rather horrid General (ugh, Cleese pulled that off abhorrently well), every role in this was nicely played. Liam McIntyre nearly stole the show as the evil henchman... except the other actors were quite good as well.

It would be a mistake to take this film too seriously. It was obviously intended as a dark comedy for the younger set. Young and teenage girls will likely love the horse theme. But older ones of both genders might appreciate the humor, the morality play, the story-lesson, and overall quality of the movie.

Is it perfect? No of course not. If one expected perfection going in, that would be somewhat delusional. Ranting at a kid's film for being a kid's film is one of those duh things. This is exactly what it's presented to be, achieved its goal, and was enjoyable all the way through. The ending was somewhat predictable and cliche, but was anyone really expecting anything different? Overall this is a decent family film and a fun watch.

I have long complained of the lack of truly great films in the last several years. There have been countless popular films that are entirely devoid of creativity that play to the audience's ignorance and basest nature. Films rife with titillation for the sake of selling tickets, a level of gore well beyond what is necessary to tell the story, stories that are weaker than wet paper, beautiful actors who can memorize lines but are unable to actually act.

Albion is not one of those. I got the film for my children expecting to be bored, sickened by the heavy-handed message, or irritated by an insipid production. I was so completely glad to be wrong. The film is visually stunning in many parts. The story is simple, relying on fantasy, fable, and myth for character archetypes as well as storyline. Refreshingly, the villain is not misunderstood or a shade of grey, he's just plain bad and the heroes are good.

It is a movie about hope, redemption, and love conquering all. Albion will be part of our family video library.

If you are one of those people who think obvious plot twists are clever, think that concepts of Good and Bad are trite, or believe that the world should be seen in shades of grey, this movie is not for you.

I quite liked it, but I usually like most fairytale films.. sure, it's no masterpiece, plenty of flaws and you can tell this film didn't have the highest budget, (the make up in particular is horrendous) but all in all an entertaining, adventurous fairytale film. There was one thing that really bothered me though: Debra Messing. Oh boy was that a big casting mistake! She was nowhere near an Irish or Scottish, or whatever she was going for, accent. She painfully destroyed every scene she was in. Other than that - great fun!

This film is a lot better than I expected it to be and one that made me laugh almost all the way through the movie. Definitely glad that I found this on Netflix