CRITIC'S STEW
Episode 101
6/22/02

REVIEW OF SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON
By Amid Amidi and Jerry Beck

AMID AMIDI:
DreamWorks’ SPIRIT: STALLION OF CIMARRON is the cliche coming-of-age tale we're all familiar with, except this time it's not a human but a horse that comes-of-age. As the film opens, a young horse named Spirit is born and ascends to become the leader of the pack. He soon meets his adversaries -the US Calvary and the threat of industrialization on nature. He's also befriended by a young Indian tribesman and falls in love with a female horse. After a few action scenes combining the aforementioned elements, everything ends happily ever after, leaving the audience to wonder, was that film really necessary?

Last year DreamWorks skewered Disney films with SHREK, now with SPIRIT, DreamWorks gives us an updated version of the Disney classic BAMBI. While there are obvious story similarities between the two films, SPIRIT copies BAMBI most closely in its viewpoint, and the atmosphere and mood it sets out to create. However what SPIRIT lacks is the joyousness, heart and dare I say, spirit, of that early Disney feature.

From the very first scene in SPIRIT, the animation slavishly attempts to recreate live-action, reminding one of the stiffness of a Ralph Bakshi rotoscope animated feature. While the characters are for the most part traditionally animated, the film's heavy use of digital techniques gives it all the hallmarks of a bad computer animated feature. Everything from the dizzying and incessantly twirling camera to the garish photorealistic art direction serves as a not-too-subtle reminder that the computer is a dangerous tool when placed in the wrong hands.

SPIRIT is not an animated travesty on the scale of OSMOSIS JONES or ATLANTIS, but it's yet another animated film that has nothing to say thematically, intellectually or visually, and for all its technical finesse, it's a film that didn't really need to be made.

JERRY BECK:
DreamWorks’ SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMMARON is a beautifully made animated feature which plays to the strengths of traditional character animation, and is a model of how to utilize CGI as a storytelling tool in an essentially hand drawn film. Unfortunately modern audiences - and most Hollywood executives - may not care.

The film begins with (and contains many) wonderful sweeping panoramic shots of the great plains, with horses running free, the wind in their hair. Great use of CinemaScope staging and CGI - you can feel every blade of green grass on the hill. But I never really identified with the main character. He's too noble, too good. Too Perfect.

The character animation, as stated, is superb. With minimal unobtrusive narration, we completely understand the feelings and thoughts of Spirit and the other horses. The action scenes have their moments - I was particularly impressed with a sequence of Spirit trying to save the filly in the wild river rapids - the CGI water effects are spectacular and really add to the reality of the scene. But I wasn't wild about Bryan Adams soft rock songs. These will date this otherwise timeless tale in years to come.

SPIRIT aims to be a classic "family film" in the old fashion sense of that term. But a family film today looks more like the high-tech, wise-cracking ICE AGE, or the superheroic SPIDER-MAN. SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMMARON gets an "A" for effort - particularly for its visuals - but with "2-D" feature animation already on wobbily legs, this horse won't help traditional hand-drawn animation stay in the race.

Amid, I liked it, and I really liked the CGI.

AMID:
That, to me, is one of the most annoying parts of the film. You could feel that in every single shot, and it wasn’t blended into the film in a seamless way like the Iron Giant was in THE IRON GIANT. The CGI stood out. Whenever there was a herd of animals, you could feel the stiffness of the CGI. You could feel the CGI in the water. You could feel it everywhere, in the grass. The CGI was present throughout the film and it really got in the way of viewing, for me.

JERRY:
I can agree only on that one scene with the locomotive, where it was obvious, but otherwise I think they were using the tool as one of the parts of their art kit to create this picture, which I thought was quite beautiful and had a lot of depth, especially because of the CGI.

Let’s agree to disagree and I want to recommend that all family audiences see SPIRIT.