For horse-obsessed kids growing up in the early ’00s, DreamWorks’ animated adventure Spirit: Stallion Of The Cimarron was the ultimate equine epic – boasting widescreen American vistas, a Hans Zimmer score, and Matt Damon lending his voice to the inner monologue of its central steed. Nearly 20 years later, reboot Spirit Untamed ditches everything about the original film save for the titular horse – instead, it’s a smaller, slighter affair inspired by Netflix’s reimagined spin-off series Spirit Riding Free.
There’s no horse narration this time – the central character isn’t Spirit himself, but adventurous teen Lucky Prescott (Instant Family’s Isabela Merced), forced to move to the frontier town of Miradero and move in with her grief-stricken father (Jake Gyllenhaal), having been brought up by her aunt (Julianne Moore) and grandfather (Joe Hart) after her mother died in a horse-based circus act gone wrong. There, she forms a connection with a certain bucking bronco – and with fellow plucky kids Abigail (Mckenna Grace) and Pru (Marsai Martin), who help her curb the stallion’s wilder impulses. But when a bunch of bandits (led by Walton Goggins’ Hendricks) have their eyes set on rustling up Spirit for a quick buck, the three girls are forced to venture out and save their four-legged friend.
Despite its title, _Spirit Untamed_ couldn’t feel tamer.
If it sounds like Chloé Zhao’s The Rider for youngsters, as Lucky bonds with Spirit one juicy apple at a time, Spirit Untamed can’t live up to that promise. Despite its title, the film couldn’t feel tamer – the character models look cheap and plasticky, bearing a straight-to-DVD simplicity, and the wilderness surrounding Miradero never actually feels wild. The animation largely lacks flair or originality, save one sequence in which Lucky encounters a zoetrope of her mum’s old circus act. The script, too, is sub-par – wasting its starry cast on unsubtle dialogue (“You stay away from that horse! No horses!” Lucky’s dad tells her), on-the-nose platitudes, and a formulaic plot.
With one-note characters and little in the way of real laughs, a vague sense of spirit is the only thing Spirit Untamed does have – it’s well-intentioned, with a casually diverse young cast and gentle themes about friendship, love, and loyalty. It skews very young, and single-digit-aged kids will likely enjoy it – but put it against the likes of Frozen, WolfWalkers, or the next-level razzle-dazzle of The Mitchells Vs The Machines, and it’s hard not to feel dispirited. Wild horses can’t drag this one away from mediocrity.