![]() ![]() And combined with a good story and clean concept that doesn't patronize its audience, it's created what I think is the finest American animated feature since BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (1991). This is digital animation at the best I've ever seen it (including the Japanese anime features I've seen in the last few years). Still, if this is the wave of the future, then SPIRIT shows us how it should be done. I normally have problems with digital animation and computer created imagery and SPIRIT is, for the most part, computer created, although it replicates the look of traditional 2-D animation. ![]() No character, human or animal, is exaggerated for cartoon effect. The horses are well designed also, looking like horses, but anthropomorphised enough to give them recognizable emotional responses. The human characters all have solid, expressive, recognizable faces, strongly differentiated from each other. There's a real palpable sense of environment and geography, of time and place, something rarely found in American animated features. There are moments of gentleness, tenderness, curiosity, and discovery, so we get to see the space the characters are in and get to connect with it ourselves. Although there are several chase scenes, the characters are just as likely to pause and connect with each other in movements reflecting naturalistic behavior. The characters don't zip around in constant frenetic motion the way they do in Disney movies. Most importantly, the film gives us a chance to savor the backgrounds. The background art and western landscapes are stunning and offer a mix of painted scenes and computer-created scenery, although everything seems computer enhanced in one way or another. The other big selling point is the artwork. But, thankfully, aside from Damon, there are no other celebrity voices. Hans Zimmer's excellent music score does a far more effective job in conveying, in dramatic and emotional terms, what the songs belabor. Neither of these elements were particularly necessary and the movie would have been better without them, although they aren't fatal. The latter two functions are served by Spirit's first-person narration, voiced by Matt Damon and told in the past tense as a reminiscence, and several songs on the soundtrack written and performed by Bryan Adams. have been over the last decade or so: 1) It's got a serious story. (And it's perfectly suitable for even the smallest children.) The movie has three selling points for people who are appalled at how childish and inane animated features in the U.S. It just may be the only western that children in today's audience will get to see on the big screen. It's a familiar saga (to western fans) but told here from the point-of-view of a wild horse. MY FRIEND FLICKA), but I assure you this is a real, bonafide western, complete with cavalry, Indians, Monument Valley and the building of the transcontinental railroad. ![]() Some of you may be forgiven for thinking it was just a horse movie, a distinct and definable genre in its own right (e.g. SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON, the new animated feature from Dreamworks, is an honest-to-God western. ![]()
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