Video Review of DreamWorks' Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron

animagusurreal · April 7, 2011, 10:17am

A new episode of my Nostalgia-Critic-style comedy video review series, about DreamWorks’ “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron” (a.k.a. “That Horse Movie”), is now up:

BlipTV:

retrorantreview.blip.tv/file/4973553/

YouTube, Part 1:

youtube.com/watch?v=afKkq_uEDzE

YouTube, Part 2:

youtube.com/watch?v=Rzs_Fbg7QhY

See if you can spot Buttercup the unicorn toy in the “fly over” of my room .

This is a mixed review – I actually recommend seeing the movie, especially for fans of animation and/or animals.

Note that there are some clips from a 1980’s comedy shown near the very end which contain a couple of mild swear words.

Regarding the digs at the film’s score, Bryan Adams’ songs aren’t actually that bad…for end title versions…I just don’t like them in the movie. Hans Zimmer’s instrumental score is brilliant as always, but it’s overused, and there are few moments of silence. (And the ones that there are are some of the best moments in the movie).

With Spirit destroying the train engines, it seems like the movie couldn’t decide if he did it on purpose or not. The voice over-line implies that he did, but without the line, it could have just as easily been that he accidentally knocked the engine loose while escaping. It’s like they wanted to have their cake and eat it too, with Spirit scoring a big action victory, yet being innocent of all the destruction.

*The “see decription” title in the video: The line was originally planned to be, “Spirit is basically Katzenberg’s attempt to do The Lion King, which is funny, because The Lion King was Katzenberg’s attempt to do Bambi.”

But then I saw the (excellent) documentary, Waking Sleeping Beauty - several interviewees said Katzenberg had little interest in The Lion King, and was much more into Pocahontas. So I re-wrote the line, and recorded it.

But THEN I re-read David Koenig’s Mouse Under Glass, in which screenwriter Linda Woolverton said she believed Lion King was Katzenberg’s idea. Since it’s so hotly debated, I decided to just go with the line I had already recorded