This girl-and-horse movie is
set in Lexington, Kentucky, though you wouldn’t know it by most of the accents.
As with Seabiscuit (whose
race scenes were shot on the same track),
it’s the story of a broken-down horse and its (metaphorically) broken
trainer/owner (Kurt Russell). The added element is Dakota Fanning, who here
cements here reputation as the go-to girl for playing precocious pre-teens.
(She’s in four films just in 2005.) Call this Weebiscuit. As with Russell’s recent Miracle, the title gives away the fact that
this won’t be the stuff of Shakespearean tragedy, so the end is pretty
anti-climatic. However, debuting director John Gatins (who scripted the decent
formula picture Coach Carter)
otherwise keeps the clichés and the melodrama to a minimum. I’m not sure I’d
tell adults to leave the kids at home, but it’s a family film they won’t roll
their eyes at. As movies about young girls bonding with their dads thanks to a
horse go, it’s a cut above 2004’s Racing Stripes, which
was actually about a talking zebra that thought it was a horse. Kris
Kristofferson plays the estranged dad of Russell’s character. Incidentally, the
horse that inspired the film is Mariah’s Storm, another filly that returned
from a leg injury like the one “Soñadora” here sustains. Notwithstanding the
title, the humans are all invented by Gatins.
circulated via email 10/27/05 and posted 10/18/13
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