Hello and welcome,
Do you, by any chance, remember the 2002 DreamWorks movie Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron? It made a decent profit and got ok reviews but in my opinion, it is just ok. You can forget everything said because the film I am reviewing today, Spirit Untamed, has very little to do with the first movie other than the title. This movie is instead based on a spin-off series on Netflix: Spirit Riding Free and even written by show’s creator Aury Wallington. In case you're curious, I did watch an episode of the show in preparation for this review and it was not bad and I can think of a lot worse ways of spending 22 minutes, but I'm not in a rush to binge-watch it. With that out of the way, let’s begin
Background
I should let you know that I did not do a lot of research on this movie and what I did do I gave you all of it in the intro (whoops). So, I guess you can send a stampede after me.
Plot
A young girl named Lucky (Isabela Merced) lives with her aunt Cora (Julianne Moore) and her grandfather in a city somewhere on the east coast. However, after Lucky lets a squirrel into their house and ruins her grandfather’s campaign party (I can think of a lot worse ways to ruin a campaign) she and Cora head to the western town of Miradero where they will stay with Lucky's father Jim (Jake Gyllenhaal). On the train over, Lucky notices a Kiger Mustang running with his herd, and the next day, Lucky goes to a corral where she sees the same horse being abused by a man named Hendricks (Walton Goggins) and she decides to call the horse Spirit. Lucky sneaks out at night and she finds Spirit and his herd together but is interrupted by Hendricks and his men, who capture all the horses, except Spirit, and take them off in a train. It is now up to Lucky and her new friends, Pru (Marsai Martin) and Abigail (Mckenna Grace) to save the day
Opinion
To start off, while you can definitely tell that this was made with a much lower budget (30 million to be exact) than a usual DreamWorks movie, the animation looks pretty good regardless. The story is not bad but it is extremely predictable. Surprisingly, I liked all the characters, but the filmmakers are trying very hard to get you invested primarily in the horse's story. However, they are not trying hard enough because all I see are horses and not well-developed characters. (for the record I’m not advocating making the horses talk, far from it). All of that equals out to a movie that is just ok, which is basically my opinion on the entire franchise, so I give Spirit Untamed 3 out of 5 stars.
Goodnight and Bee Happy™
Mr. Bee
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