Movie Thoughts: Spirit Untamed (2021)

• Released: 4 June 2021
• Directed by: Elaine Bogan, Ennio Torresan
• Running time: 1 h 28 min
• Rating 1.5/5

Synopsis

A girl named Lucky travels to the frontier and discovers a love for horses and adventure by befriending a wild mustang named Spirit. 

My Thoughts

Once upon a 2017 Dreamworks (and Netflix) released a TV-show spinoff of the 2002 Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron movie called Spirit Riding Free. Being a big fan of the original (see my MT on it), I was excited for more content...only for the series to end up being garbage. With unlikable main characters, a complete lack of textures and cheap-looking animation it was not a joy to watch. Also, it wasn't actually a real continuation of OG Spirit's story. 

Rather, it's a CGI story centering on his son (from hereon referred to as Spirit Jr.) becoming a semi-tame horse befriending a settler girl named Lucky. Pretty much everything antithetical to what the original stood for, with this untamable horse fighting for the freedom of his land and against the colonizers and settlers. So, yeah not a fan of the show. So when a movie adaptation was announced based on the Riding Free, I wasn't really excited. But let's take a look. The animation and textures are at the very fucking least a step up from the show.

So looking at the movie...yeah, it does have some things that it does better than the show. Visuals aside (though they're still not that great looking, just average for a cheaper CGI movie), I also prefer this movie's handling of Spirit Jr. The show ends up with Spirit Jr. pretty much becoming semi-tame (they keep trying to insist that he's wild, but he adheres to this girl almost completely so yeah, to me he's not feral anymore). Here, he actually remains a wild horse, though he does form a bond of trust with Lucky. This, I actually prefer way more over the show. It's very clear that these two have a strong connection, but they never de-wild Spirit Jr. like they do in the show. 

However, that's really where my praise for the movie kind of ends. The characters were still unlikable (I can't stand Lucky, to be honest) and one thing the show did do better was actually making Aunt Cora be a decently likable character. She's just so snobbish and obnoxious here, constantly dismissing Lucky's interests and anything that makes her happy. Jim isn't much better. I get that he has trauma from his wife's death, but god, pushing away your daughter and then expecting to just be able to enter back into her life like it was nothing was not the way to do it. I also found it kind of, I don't know, creepy, that he ended up naming his locomotive project after his dead wife. It's probably supposed to be charming or something, but it felt really weird to me.

So, yeah, half a star for the decent (nothing more than that, just decent) visuals, a full one for Spirit Jr. actually remaining a wild horse true to the spirit (pun intended) of the OG movie, but that's really all I can give it. It doesn't have likable characters (mains included), it doesn't have great animation and it has pretty standard writing.

If you want a story about a nobody befriending a wild creature by Dreamworks that's way better, I'll refer you to How to Train Your Dragon.