SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON, the new animated feature from Dreamworks, is an honest-to-God western. Some of you may be forgiven for thinking it was just a horse movie, a distinct and definable genre in its own correct (e.k. MY FRIEND FLICKA), simply I clinch you this is a real, bonafide western, complete with cavalry, Indians, Monument Valley and the edifice of the transcontinental railroad. It'southward a familiar saga (to western fans) but told here from the point-of-view of a wild horse. It simply may exist the only western that children in today'southward audience will get to run across on the large screen. (And it'southward perfectly suitable for even the smallest children.)
The flick has 3 selling points for people who are appalled at how childish and inane animated features in the U.S. accept been over the terminal decade or so:
1) It's got a serious story. ii) The horses don't talk. 3) The horses don't sing.
The latter two functions are served by Spirit's commencement-person narration, voiced past Matt Damon and told in the by tense as a reminiscence, and several songs on the soundtrack written and performed past Bryan Adams. Neither of these elements were particularly necessary and the motion-picture show would have been better without them, although they aren't fatal. Hans Zimmer'south first-class music score does a far more effective job in conveying, in dramatic and emotional terms, what the songs belabor. Simply, thankfully, bated from Damon, there are no other celebrity voices.
The other big selling point is the artwork. The background fine art and western landscapes are stunning and offer a mix of painted scenes and computer-created scenery, although everything seems computer enhanced in ane fashion or some other. Near importantly, the moving picture gives us a chance to savor the backgrounds. The characters don't zip effectually in constant frenetic motion the way they exercise in Disney movies. Although in that location are several chase scenes, the characters are just equally probable to pause and connect with each other in movements reflecting naturalistic behavior. There are moments of gentleness, tenderness, curiosity, and discovery, then we become to meet the space the characters are in and get to connect with information technology ourselves. There's a real palpable sense of environment and geography, of time and place, something rarely constitute in American animated features.
The character design is also well-washed. The human characters all accept solid, expressive, recognizable faces, strongly differentiated from each other. The horses are well designed also, looking like horses, but anthropomorphised enough to give them recognizable emotional responses. No character, man or beast, is exaggerated for drawing upshot.
I normally have bug with digital animation and reckoner created imagery and SPIRIT is, for the virtually part, figurer created, although it replicates the await of traditional 2-D animation. Withal, if this is the wave of the future, and so SPIRIT shows us how it should be done. This is digital animation at the best I've ever seen information technology (including the Japanese anime features I've seen in the last few years). And combined with a good story and clean concept that doesn't patronize its audience, information technology'south created what I call back is the finest American blithe feature since BEAUTY AND THE Fauna (1991). If there is whatsoever meaning flaw in SPIRIT, aside from the songs, it'due south that the story falls short of greatness, undercut past the lack of a sufficiently emotional payoff. Still, it's a better story than whatsoever I've seen in an American animated production since at least THE Lion Male monarch. Some viewers may quibble virtually the politically correct aspects of the story (cavalry=bad, Indians=skillful), just there is a moment near the cease that balances things out in an intelligent, dramatic style.
SPIRIT may suffer at the boxoffice because it doesn't take the all-important everyman-common-denominator touches that have so cheapened the animated genre but attracted audiences looking for easy laughs (e.g. celebrity voices doing hyperactive genies, show-tune-singing meerkats and jive-talking jackasses). But it should give a measure of promise to that small, passionate segment of the audience that cares about animation every bit a medium capable in its own right of great storytelling and cinematic artistry.
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