tea biscuit

Rating: Null/10 (6 August 2003)

I thought it was kind of bland. Forgive me, but I felt like it was a McFilm. If Adobe had software for making Oscar-style movies about horses, and you simply had to plug in all the variables, a big rich horse owner with a good heart, a poor little feisty jockey with a good heart, a big poor wise horse trainer with a good heart, a feisty little horse with a good heart, a big fat other horse owner with not such a good heart with a big black horse to beat, and a lot of fall foliage, this is the movie that it would pump out. But software is only as good as the data that goes into it. I'm sorry, but I feel like robots could have made this film. It was lovely to watch but I wasn't moved. Perhaps if the humans had been allowed to have frailties and foibles slightly more complex than the horse's, I would have gotten involved in the film, but I didn't shed any tears despite all the obvious cues by the music, camera shots, and script that were asking me to have specific moments of catharsis. For the same ten bucks, I could have had the fortune cookie telling me not to give up on underdogs and a whole chow fun dinner on top of it.