Review of Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002) by Brunovn00 — 19 Mar 2020

This is definitely one of Dreamwork's most underrated films. I just saw it and I think it was really good. I could talk all day about the animation and how impressive a lot of shots and sequences are. While the movie is short I felt like it was paced well and the story flowed pretty smoothly. The problem with its short length is the character stuff, because besides Spirit, any other character is just a plot device (Well, probably Little Creek wasn't as one-dimensional as the rest of the characters. At least he had an understandable motivation). The music is pretty good and some of the songs were also pretty good, even if a couple of them were pop-rock kinda songs that didn't fit the tone.

I like the concept of it being a story with animals that don't speak, I think it was to show how animals do have feelings even if they can't speak (which is one of the main arguments in favor of animal cruelty: "They don't feel pain because they can't say they're in pain"). I feel like that is so powerful to me and it has some emotional moments that were really effective. However, while I love the concept of not having them speak, there's a narrator (Who's supposed to be Spirit) and that's probably my biggest issue with the movie: The narration. It was genuinely obnoxious because it was so redundant. The narration serves no purpose other than to explain what we are literally watching onscreen. For example, Spirit is captured by the villains and the narrator says: "I was captured by these men and I was scared"...Like...You don't say, dude.

Other than that I recommend this movie. It's not a masterpiece, but it's a movie that was made with love and effort. It has a cute message about animal liberation that I think it was communicated in a great way. I know this is intended to be for kids and the story needs to be easy to understand, but I guess that they could just remove the narration.