O Corcel Branco

Lame is not a word someone wants to hear when talking about horses, but this horse film is very lame. Being a fan of both Mickey Rooney and horse pictures I thought this might have been a half way decent film capitalizing on the extremely well done Black Stallion films and TV series in which Mickey Rooney starred. Nope. Even by rip-off standards does this film come close to be much more than a waste of time. I've seen at least fifty a-girl-and-her-horse (and boy-and-his-horse) pictures ranging from old MGM B-pictures to numerous Disney outings and I've enjoyed them all. Canadian and Australian efforts usually are quiet good with this genre. The stallion and Mickey Rooney are great but the plot and dialogue is so terrible the film is better watched with the sound turn down. Murray Langston, the former "Unknown Comic" shows up as a school bus driver and actually gives one of the better performances. That should tell you something.

I give this movie a 4 of ten and I'm being pretty generous. This was done to capitalize on the success of the Black Stallion movies and series with Mickey Rooney. Unfortunately its just not very good. Isabel Lorca is gorgeous girl but she couldn't act her way out of a paper sack! Rooney is OK, but he plot is really poorly thought out. Very little of this movie feels real, it feels like play someone was staging on Saturday afternoon. The most believable moments are between Stephanie (Lorca) and her boyfriend on the bus! Even the climax feels contrived and manipulative. If your'e looking for a decent family flick for a rainy afternoon, you could do worse, but not by much.

Oddly rated "pg" for some profanity and adult situations that seem rather at odds with the rest of the film.

Probably the worst movie I've ever seen, and, having seen many movies from all different times and genres, this is a big insult. First of all, Isabel Lorca's incredibly bad French accent makes it very hard to understand what she is saying, and terrible performances by all of the actors. Also, the editing is the worst in the world. There are about 500 obvious switches of the horse, from albinos, to Arabians, dapple grays, etc. Plus, what was with the song? "You're the Lightning in my eyes, you lift me up, you bring me high!!" Also, the stunt doubles that they got were very bad. She looked like her neck was snapping back, especially when she was jumping for Mme. Rene. Also, the plot with her stepfather was completely ridiculous, as was her going blind, since both those plots went absolutely NOWHERE!!! It was as though someone got to lazy too shoot the rest of the movie. Plus, Lucas Mitchell was very ugly. Just a note. Mickey Rooney must have been in a very bad place to do this movie. DO NOT SEE IT! Unless you want to mock it, like me and my friends, in which case go right ahead, and rent it for a long time, since you'll want to watch it over and over again, you'll be laughing so hard at it! And I will agree with auwhite that it was indeed very disturbing when, let's just say, certain aspects of her wardrobe were missing, and that part of her body was sticking right out in front of the camera. (GROSS!)

And I've seen some bad ones. Aside from the dialog being hokey, the plot being full of holes, the acting was stiff and unreal... I don't even know where to start. I was particularly amused at the fact that the main 'stallion' was portrayed by at least 4 different horses that were not even the same color (watchers can thrill to the feeling of the magical color changing horse!) Yes, the base color was always white, but did they really think we were dumb enough to mistake a 17+ hand warmblood dark dapple grey, a cremello pony (who I believe was a mare) a fleabitten grey horse, and a cream horse as all the same animal??? And the cut scenes were horrible. Were they supposed to show tension? action? I was confused as they showed several different horses and riders, all supposedly the same horse! The riders were wearing different color clothes! The main girl couldn't ride, her 'trainer' couldn't ride, and I'm almost ashamed of Mickey Rooney for being in this stinker! He must have needed the money badly. Avoid this one. If you want to see an uplifting horse movie, go rent Sylvester.

Delightfully cheesy horse pucky, though. I agree wholeheartedly with the other reviewer--the use of stock footage of several different horses doesn't fool anyone! Not to mention the glaring continuity error--children under the age of 18 are NOT allowed to show stallions at almost all rated or USA Equestrian sanctioned horse shows. This movie is not entirely without its redeeming points though. There's a superb line of dialogue where Girl Rider wishes Bad Guy Competition Rider "Good luck" as he rides into the arena. He sneers at her and says, "When you're as GOOD as i am, you don't NEED luck." heh. awesome. I would love to get all of my barn buddies together and watch this while drinking alcoholic beverages.