A Fine Step

At the beginning of this movie it appeared to have a lot of potential to be an heart-warming and interesting story. But for some reason instead of being interesting it was more of a bunch of jumbled situations that seemed to lose the flow of the story. The forecast, at the beginning, seemed to be the love of a teenage girl for horses that was going to change her life and effect all the people around her. However, we have to go through a number of dull side plots which appeared to even leave the actor's unexcited.. There were a few good performances as Leonor Varela was believable in her part plus Luke Perry had his moments during the film. But most others seemed stiff and exhausted when delivering lines. In fact, I am not sure that Armand Assante was sober at anytime while the cameras rolled. Many times I could not even understand what he was saying. And then came the climax of the entire film only to be ruined by some foolish announcers trying to put some comedy into a situation that was high drama. This falls right at the feet of the writers and director. A situation that was actually embarrassing. If you can get past some of the dull moments the film does have a message. It was just too hard to find with all the wearisome situation.

When I saw the story-line for this, I thought that here was a story with some heartwarming possibilities. The disjointed delivery of the story didn't deliver.

Of course you can guess where the story is going after you get into it, but it wandered while getting there and transitions weren't smooth. I think part of the problem was that there were too many characters that the film tried to focus on. Either Lilly or Claire would have made a great central character, but while the film leaned toward Claire, it was still divided and Sneed's performance just wasn't good enough, even for a 13 year old. Given the actors, I would have rather seen Claire minimized and have Lilly be the central focus. Either way, I think I would have found a stronger focus on either compelling but as was, I just didn't get drawn in.

One of the central plot points, which was the deal made for the loan on Cal's ranch, was confusing. It really didn't make sense, but then neither did the fact that Cal didn't win a huge lawsuit for negligence from his accident thus negating the need for the loan.

You might have expected a romance, but there really isn't one.

The two actors with the longest resumes were big disappointments. Both Perry and Assante coasted through the film with little conviction.

I think there were supposed to be moments of comedy with arrogant Marzo trying to train the horse and later with the color commentator at the contest. Marzo just fell flat and the commentator was so annoying, I couldn't stand it and had to fast forward through much of it.