? Mary O’Hara’s 1941
novel My Friend Flicka was made into a movie a couple of years after that, and
a TV series in the 1950s. Here, Alison Lohman essays the role undertaken by
Roddy McDowell in 1943, the teenager who falls in love with a wild mustang. Her
parents, Wyoming ranchers played by Tim McGraw and Maria Bello, disagree about
whether to let her keep the horse.
+ This is
old-fashioned in a good way. Only the abbreviated title attempts to be hip,
even though the story is reset in the present day. The relationship between the
brother and sister is not the major aspect of the film, but it’s something you
don’t see that often. McGraw and Bello also seem like a real couple. In fact,
each of the family members is fairly well drawn, and the family dynamic seems
organic.
- Lohman is a good
actress, but she’s a 26-year-old playing a high-school girl. The supposedly
brilliant American History essay that she writes about how the Western settlers
nearly wiped out the wild mustang seems remarkably obtuse in its failure to
mention the other occupants they nearly wiped out. The story is ultimately very
conventional, and the ending anticlimactic.
= *** I don’t know
what’s with all the girl-and-horse movies (Dreamer, Racing Stripes)
lately, but this is probably the strongest of the lot, a bona fide family movie
that won’t leave the older viewers feeling sugar shock.
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