OVP: Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron

Film: Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002)
Stars: Matt Damon, James Cromwell, Daniel Studi
Director: Kelly Asbury & Lorna Cook
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Animated Feature Film)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

We're continuing on our trend of animated feature films (I know at least two more we'll get to in the next month, though that might be the end of the train for a while as I'm not completing the category in the near future).  This month, we travel all the way back to 2002, when Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron was galloping into theaters (I will try to keep the horse puns to a minimum).  This was in the early stages of the category, and in some ways it got better after this time period (years later we'd probably have seen a movie like The Cat Returns make the cut instead of Spirit or Treasure Planet), this is the year that was most noted because it's the only year where one of the independent films won their trophy.  Spirited Away, now hailed as a landmark, somehow overcame four $100 million blockbusters, the last of which I finally saw this past week is Spirit.  After viewing, I'm less curious about how it beat this film (we'll get to this category eventually, but considering the gap between the films in quality, Spirited Away was inevitably going to win here), but how Spirit won $100 million in the first place.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Spirit (Damon), a wild horse at the dawn of the American West.  The horse tale in some ways mirrors all horse tales, where we have a beautiful wild steed that others are enamored by, wanting to conquer its spirit, and only the man who can truly become one with its free heart is able to ride him.  We see Spirit against the backdrop of the American Indian Wars, where he sacrifices himself to save his entire herd from being taken by the Colonel (Cromwell) and his cavalry.  Little Creek (Studi) is a Native American who is also against the Colonel, and after wearing down Spirit, convinces him to join forces so that they can both escape the Colonel, which they do by jumping over the Grand Canyon (it's a fable).  Afterward, Little Creek & Spirit bid each other adieu & Spirit rejoins his old herd.

This is all relatively routine, but Spirit occasionally borders on almost an art film by breaking one rule of children's animation-the horses don't talk.  In almost any other movie of this ilk, the horses would have their own language, maybe not one known to the humans, but one that they could use to carry along the story, but that's not the case here.  Matt Damon provides some insight into Spirit as the narrator (breaking some of the aesthetic the "art film" would allow), but he's the only horse who gets to communicate with the audience, and its relatively sparing.  As a result, there are large sequences of this film where it's just background noise and music.

This would honestly be kind of cool if it worked, but it doesn't.  The music bounces (Hans Zimmer, y'all), but it's not that distinctive, and while the animation is lovely, it's not groundbreaking in the way that Treasure Planet or Spirited Away would be that year.  And the story is bland-there's no connection that you're allowed to properly make with the human characters-even Cromwell's Colonel is pretty toothless in terms of how you'd consider a villain-and so the movie just sort of happens.  Above all else, it's pretty boring, which is why I'm shocked this had such an impact on the box office of 2002.  One could claim we were in an era where animated films printed money, but that was not the case yet, and in fact we were heading into a rough era for animation before the late aughts saved the genre from becoming too-expensive-to-handle.  All-in-all, a dud, but at least a curiosity of a dud.