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Spirit
Directed by Kelly Asbury & Lorna Cook
Starring: Matt Damon, James Cromwell, Daniel Studi
Running Time: 1:30
Country: USA
Year: 2002
Web: Official Site
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This is the story of Spirit, a wild stallion who lives in the great American West. Courageous and smart, he becomes head of his band. But one day, he crosses the path of men and his life will never be the same.
It is difficult to believe that this animated emanates from the same studio that gave us Shrek, Spirit being so much more Disney! And it's such a waste! The beautiful drawings and fluid animation only serve a story of rare silliness. All of Disney's leitmotivs are here: an excessive anthropomorphism, a cheesy love story and a happy ending are distilled in pre-formatted and exhausting songs (sung here by Bryan Adams).
The recipe of these films is always the same: a young turbulent hero becomes a beautiful, good and strong chief who must fight very cruel and malicious adversaries. He will triumph and find love. It is the same "they lived happy ever after" that Disney has been dishing out since 1937.
The horses can be replaced by anyone: dinosaurs, deer, Indians, or slaves and the treatment will always be rigorously the same.
The authors even manage to stick in a gigantic explosion in a film about a horse! Joel Silver had probably been approached to be producer. A rather pathetic and scandalous scene indeed, where the exceptionally gifted horse destroys by himself two locomotives to stop the conquest of the West and get his blonde mare back. Simply unbearable.
Only Hans Zimmer's music avoids the usual stereotypes. His partition is light and doesn't paraphrase the action as heavily as James Newton Howard did in Dinosaur. The animation is splendid, but some shots are too mechanical while the background isn't stunning in some cases.
Laurent Ziliani
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Festival-goers weren't fooled. During its first projection in Cannes, in the morning, the film was copiously booed. Spirit was presented out of competition, but we however give it the Palme of Inanity.
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Spirit review
