Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron Doesn't Trust Either Its Audience or Animation Enough

From the get-go, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron struck me as an attempt to do a Western version of Bambi. This was mainly because Spirit was also a tale of relatively non-anthropomorphized animals wandering around in the woodlands with a darker tone. Whereas Bambi committed to its darker tone (oh, did it ever), Spirit has trouble actually letting its more somber elements get executed properly. Nobody's expecting an animated kids movies from DreamWorks to achieve the bleakness of a Robert Bresson movie, but Spirit constantly struggles to achieve effective moments of poignancy because it never allows those moments to be as restrained as they should be. It constantly beats you over the head with its intent instead of letting the emotions sweep over you.


So, who exactly is Spirit? Well, he's a horse that speaks only through narration by Matt Damon. Spirit loves his life as a member of a herd of horses, they're all one big family that look out for one another. Spirit lived in the American west in an undetermined era of the 19th-century, which means it's only a matter of time before white colonizers come in and wreck shop. Sure enough, some settlers eventually show up and take Spirit away from home and family. Now Spirit is trapped under the command of The Colonel (James Cromwell), who will stop at nothing to break Spirit. Teaming up with Little Creek (Daniel Studi) gives Spirit a chance to escape and embark on a whole new adventure that'll expand his worldview considerably.

Spirit: Stallion of the Cimmaron is constantly tripping over its own feet (hooves?), it's one of those movies where its greatest enemy is itself. The animation alone is a major problem since it's constantly going for images that will instill a sense of epic grandeur in the viewer. However, the decision was made to have the hand-drawn characters be set against a number of computer-animated backgrounds and props and the two elements never gel together properly. Instead of a successful blend of two animation blends like Treasure Planet, Spirit constantly just looks like a bunch of hand-drawn animated characters have wandered into a level from a PlayStation One video game.

Even worse is the fact that the movie doesn't commit to its genuinely novel idea to not have Spirit talk. Actually committing to a movie starring non-speaking animals could have been a great chance for the animators to show off their strengths in communicating personality and motivation in subtle terms. Unfortunately, the movie has come up with other abrasive ways to make it clear what Spirit is thinking at all times. One way is through Matt Damon's omnipresent narration, which is around to make handhold the audience through even the most visually obvious of scenarios. As if that weren't bad enough, Damon's flat line-readings are utterly devoid of personality, which hinders his attempts to deliver some badly written attempts at jokes, which include a "Women, amirite?" gag directed at Spirit's love interest.

Somehow worse than Damon's narration is a barrage of original tunes penned by Bryan Adams that play over way too much of the movie. These songs are chock full of generic lyrics that play over dialogue-free sequences and, like the narration dialogue, practically throttle, rather than poke, you in the ribs over the emotional intent of a scene. Did we really need a Bryan Adams song called Get Off of My Back to play over a scene where a bunch of people try and fail to ride Spirit? These songs add nothing but ensure that Spirit's forgettable soundtrack is packed with disposable rock ballads. Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron keeps undercutting potentially moving dialogue-free sequences by relying on intrusive narration and even more invasive Bryan Adams tracks.

In the process, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron ruins all the emotional potential its story had, which is a shame because there are some good elements to be found here. Certain pieces of the hand-drawn animation in here, namely facial expressions and movements from the titular lead character, are well-realized and the surprisingly heavy dose of high-octane action sequences in the project do help it to stand out among another animated family fare that typically focus exclusively on comedy. Those bursts of quality in Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, however, just reinforce how lackluster the rest of the project is. Though its poster declares its "a motion picture experience for everyone", in truth, Spirit's inability to trust either its animation or its viewers make it a far less universally appealing motion picture experience.