Spirit Untamed
A big-screen offshoot of the Netflix series Spirit Riding Free has more than enough adventure and humour to gratify its young audience.
What’s not to like? Here be handsome horses, spectacular scenery, a handful of cheery songs, plucky, big-eyed girls and astonishing equine stunts. The original film, DreamWorks' Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002), was a bold step away from the Disneyfication of animals, with Matt Damon supplying the inner voice of the titular wild mustang. Spirit himself communicated with the other horses through physical and facial expression, a purity of form that drew audiences into the rarefied world of the stallion. Not surprisingly, the film was nominated for an Oscar for best animated feature and fifteen years later spawned a Netflix series, Spirit Riding Free.
Spirit Untamed, which marks the directorial debut of Elaine Bogan, introduces us to Lucky (voiced by Isabela Merced), the daughter of a female stunt rider who died when she was little. Entrusted to her aunt Cora (Julianne Moore) and grandfather (Joe Hart), Lucky grows up on the East Coast and has emerged into a thoroughly untameable city girl. Following one calamity too many, she is sent away to stay with her father Jim Prescott (Jake Gyllenhaal) in the nowhere town of Miradero, where Lucky fears there might not even be a theatre or a library. Jim, meanwhile, is terrified of Lucky’s adventurous nature and forbids her from associating with any of the local horses. There’s one horse in particular he’s wary of, a descendant of the eponymous steed, who cannot be broken in by even the most experienced rider…
Inevitably, Spirit Untamed harnesses the assets of computer-animation, unlike the traditionally crafted original. But it does so with expertise, bringing the new Spirit’s movements thrillingly to life, along with the perilous terrain in which he gallops. The vocal work is also exceptionally accomplished, in which every syllable is audible, something not to be taken for granted in animation. It’s good, too, to see/hear Jake Gyllenhaal back in the snowy, mountainous terrain of Brokeback Mountain, where he even gets to contribute a song at the film’s finale. However, for all its merits, Spirit Untamed feels more like an extended episode of the TV series than a girl-and-her-horse classic. But it’s an engaging, ultimately moving adventure which should more than satisfy its core demographic.
Alternative title: Spirit Riding Free.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Voices Isabela Merced, Marsai Martin, Mckenna Grace, Walton Goggins, Andre Braugher, with Julianne Moore, and Jake Gyllenhaal, as well as Eiza González, Lucian Perez, Joe Hart.
Dir Elaine Bogan, Pro Karen Foster, Screenplay Aury Wallington and Kristin Hahn, Ph Robert Edward Crawford, Pro Des Paul Duncan, Ed R. Orlando Duenas, Music Amie Doherty.
DreamWorks Animation/Denstu-Universal Pictures.
88 mins. USA. 2021. Rel: 30 July 2021. Cert. U.
