Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron

Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002) tells the story of a wild horse, and the horse never speaks. That was a choice and it determines everything. In the animation tradition animals talk; here the horses do not even talk to each other. Emotion comes only through the face, the ears and the stance. There is a narrator, but the voice does not come out of the horse's mouth. The story: Spirit leads his herd. The army captures him and tries to break him and he refuses. Then he meets a young Lakota man called Little Creek and a different relationship forms. The visual method is mixed: the horses hand drawn, the terrain and camera moves generated on computer. It is among DreamWorks's last large hand drawn productions. Bryan Adams's songs stand in for narration; where there is no speech the emotion arrives as a song. For some viewers that is the weakest thing about it. The animators spent a long time observing real horses for the anatomy, and the movement is above the standard of its period. The railway section and the final jump are the best moments. It did not meet expectations commercially. It runs 83 minutes. Good for: family animation, animal stories, and western texture. Less good for: the density of songs can tire you and the story is simple.