Dream Horse (2021)

Film: Dream Horse (2021)

Stars: Toni Collette, Damian Lewis, Owen Teale, Joanna Page, Nicholas Farrell

Director: Euros Lyn

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

After a year where I literally said at least once-a-day, sometimes to great chagrin "I want to go to the movies," I have made a firm commitment to myself that I will go to the cinema, in theaters, to see a picture at least once a week for the rest of the year, unless illness, travel, or money prevents me.  As a result, we're seeing a movie this week that I might have skipped in the before times, but I went to (at my local AMC!) because I'm sticking by this pledge, not just to support theaters but also (hopefully) to catch a few hidden gems I might have otherwise never caught (also, because I am never taking going to the movies for granted again).  Dream Horse, while a nice way to spend an evening, is not one of those gems, though, covering known territory without having much else to say.

(Spoilers Ahead) Jan Vokes (Collette) is a middle-aged woman working several jobs who makes little money in her Wales community.  The only thing that stands out about her is the numerous animals her unemployed husband Brian (Teale) keeps in their small home.  After meeting Howard (Lewis) at the pub she bartends at (where he brags about his former glory with horse-racing), she decides to buy a mare with a winning lineage & breed her to have a foal that might be able to be a racer.  While the mare dies in childbirth, the foal that she sires, Dream Alliance, shows promise as a racehorse.  His owners, because of the poverty that Jan & Brian live in, aren't just the Vokes, but also Howard and a number of figures in the village who are treating Dream Alliance as a lottery ticket that might change their lives.

As you can imagine, both because this is based on a true story & because it's a movie at all, Dream Alliance defies the odds and becomes a major figure, eventually winning the Welsh National after recovering from an injury.  He also brings some light to the darkness of Jan's life, reigniting her marriage with Brian, and giving her a sense of purpose that she feels is lacking in a life where she simply exists.  This is a great source of material for a movie, and Jan of course has a fine actress to transform her; movies about ordinary people who are on auto-pilot and suddenly find a newfound spring in life are something I enjoy if I'm going toward schmaltz, if only because we can always do with a little blind hope.

But that's not really what this movie is about.  The humor is sophomoric, and the film doesn't really know how to treat Jan as the picture continues.  There are times when Jan doesn't really respect the financial sacrifice the other owners are taking in investing in this horse.  Yes, it's initially treated as a lark, but he's also a ticket out for many of them, into a better life, and when she refuses to sell the horse, this is swept under-the-rug by the writers when it should be at at the forefront of the decision (poverty, and the chance to escape it, is a serious issue, and perhaps should be equalled to the amount of heart that Jan invests in Dream Alliance...I have become more sensitive in the past year to the idea of romanticizing loyalty at the expense of profiting off of a system that keeps poor people poor).  More so, the film hits such familiar territory in the last thirty minutes that you could walk out of the theater & guess exactly what happened.  This isn't necessarily bad, but it's also kind of blasé.