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.
