Hey folks, Harry here... We had some images up a couple of days ago from SPIRIT and ya know, that just opened up a big ol can of information on SPIRIT. Before I get to this review, i want to tell you how the film performed on the studio side of things. Just a couple days ago in Omaha, Nebraska they tested SPIRIT to a family audience of around 300-350. These are the Ma, Pa and Jessie and Joe types. The traditional family of four crowd. How do I know this? That the kids were ages 8 to 12? Well, let's just say that Foe Jarrell has been digging up the info again and he's done a helluva job. SPIRIT has tested stronger than any Dreamworks Animated project, including SHREK. The word has it that at this point they're gonna fiddle a bit with music and the narration, but otherwise... this is apparently a fantastic 2-D animated film. An animated film in cinemascope. An animated film about animals... that don't talk or sing. Now ordinarily, I'd say this film was doomed, except for one thing.
Earlier this year, as part of my Saturday Morning Film Club for kids at the Alamo Drafthouse, Quentin Tarantino hosted a screening of the old Tru-Color Roy Rogers and Trigger film... THE GOLDEN STALLION. VAST amounts of the film feature Trigger, Trigger's girlfriend and Trigger Jr performing with other horses with NO HUMANS AROUND AT ALL. I'm talking LONG SEQUENCES. The kids were entranced. Cheering, crying and eating it up. There is a fascination with horses for both children and adults. Dreamworks seems to have taken a fairly epic look a the life of a wild stallion on the wild frontier of yesteryear... And the word from the screening was golden... and as if to back that up is this look from Robin Hood... This is one I can't wait to see...
Harry This is my first time writing in, but I had to respond to your last entry about Spirit.
I must say this is easily the best 2D animated movie to come out since Iron Giant. The Art direction and animation are simply superb, easily the best horse animation ever done. The backgrounds look sort of watercolorish and a bit simplified, not overly detailed and busy like some of the recent Disney stuff. The same can be said for the story, which I know some people have been down on. But I gotta tell you, I thought it was solid. It was simple like some of the older classic Disney movies were. It was about friendship, determination, and coming of age. The animals don't talk; a very risky move on DreamWorks's part considering that the main character is a horse. You don't miss it though, in fact you really end up appreciating it.
There are relatively long stretches where there is no character dialogue, just some voice over narration as if you were hearing the thoughts of the horse. In the end, that will probably be what hurts this movie a bit because regular Joe Blow movie goer doesn't have a big enough attention span to go 4 minutes without some goofy butt joke. But I think true animation/ film making fans will really enjoy what they are seeing. I didn't recognize the voice talent. I'm thinking it was temp in lieu of casting a big name actor to come in for promotional purposes.
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I'll give you a general overview of what the movie is about without going into obnoxious detail.
The movie as you know is about a Mustang horse in the old west. The story literally starts with his birth and there are some nice scenes here, very reminiscent of Bambi, set to music (remember, no talking animals). What I heard again was only temp...they were using a lot of music from Rudy which if they could come close to, would be great.
We quickly get to where the horse is all grown up, in his prime, and the leader of his herd/ family of Mustangs. One night he sees smoke in the distance and curiously goes to inspect. He finds these strange 2 legged creatures he's never seen before...human settlers.
After an action packed chase sequence, he is captured and taken back to a fort where the Calvary tries to break his "spirit" and tame this wild beast.
This is where we meet the antagonist of the movie. He is like the captain of the troops and very intent on taming this animal just as his troops will tame the west. A couple of days later the troops bring in a captured Indian.
Through a series of events, the Indian and the horse escape the fort in another action packed chase. Lots of beautiful CGI, moving camera type scenes in these chase sequences. The Indian takes the horse back to his village where he is introduced to a beautiful female stallion. The backdrop for this sequence looks to be Yosemete...just awsome.
They are tied together for some time so that the female might tame him. Starting to get the idea of the title yet? It's the main theme of the story...this idea of staying wild and free. Beyond this part of the story, is more trouble from that army captain and yet a third climactic chase scene and a very nice moment of respect between protagonist and antagonist.
I'd just like to add a couple more things. First the movie stays very respectful to Indians, although they do have them speaking English. I guess animals that don't talk and native speaking Indians with subtitles would have been too crazy. I also liked the differences in acting between the horses that were tamed and the wild horse. Again you'll be blown away by the animal, emotional acting in this film. The movie isn't all serious of course. there's definitely funny stuff and it all works perfect with the story. No cartoony, comedy relief type characters and no Broadway musicals here. That crap makes money though. I just don't know how wide appealed this movie will be. We'll see.
Lastly, I've never really been a fan of Jeffrey Katzenburg, but I was recently talking to someone who had been working at DreamWorks back when this movie was in pre-production and my friend was asking him, "Why would you make a movie all about horses? Do you know how hard horse animation is?" and Katzenburg replied, "that's exactly why we should make this movie."
Robinhood
