Well, I guess this movie is worth seeing. It is educational. It teaches us how Americans treated the Wild West. It tells us why we should respect the native Americans.

The animations are great. Spirit the Kiger Mustang has a range of cool expressions and has a nice build. He is determined and resourceful. The cougar is drawn with the techniques used to draw the lionesses in The Lion King. I like the idea of having an eagle too.

The plot is wonderfully unique. Though I always thought that humans in animal cartoons spoil the plot but this time, they are the key of this movie.

Things that I do not like are:

- The animals cannot talk
- Music is not memorable
- Scenes are not very colourfull
- There is no animal villain

I remember when this movie was first coming out. At the time, I had a friend who was a horse lunatic. She absolutely loved them and anything that had to do with them. So, of course, she got very enthusiastic about going to see the horse film and because of her influence, so did I. We never did get to see it, though. She moved away before we got a chance, and I forgot all about the "horse film".

I ended up discovering it one day in the rentals section about a half a year later and I was eager to finally get to watch it.

(Sorry, about my little stroll down memory lane. Essentially, I just wanted to include it for one reason. It seems to me, that there is a trend in Spirit fans; many of them really REALLY like horses.)

In conclusion to my story above: I hated it. Well, at least at the time I did. I re-watched it recently and it is tolerable. But, I do still see why I hated it so much for so many years. It's just so...tedious.

It got extremely irritating sometimes. Matt Damon's lackluster voice-over about had me fuming. It sounded so pretentious and derivative. "Like the wind in the buffalo grass, we belonged here", was my personal favorite quote from the silly narrations. Why exactly is the horse narrating, if he can't talk? Honestly, I think a third-person narration would have been preferred and made more sense. That's the worst of it, but there is more. Bryan Adams sings EVERY SINGLE SONG. Now this wouldn't be a bad thing, really. His voice is really unique and I think it fits this type of movie. The real problem is that there are so many songs so close to each other. Many times I just felt like yelling "SHUT UP!" right at my TV. And when they did, it worked. I felt so much more involved in the movie when they left both Matt Damon and Bryan Adams out of my sound waves. Spirit did have a nice score, which was very welcome. I wish they had used it a bit more.

Spirit is quite possibly the most underappreciated film on Keyframe. There are no heroic wolfdogs here or singing meerkats, but somehow, Spirit is just as touching and funny as many other highly praised films on here.

The story is a simple one, of a young mustangs fight for freedom. The horses do not talk, which is a relief. For once, I do not want a singing animal musical. If you do, watch something else, because you'll probably find this 'boring.'
Spirit has something that real horses don't - eyebrows. He has human-like eyes too. We know what he's feeling, and accompanied by some whinnying, we can almost guess what he's saying. He doesn't need to talk. Most of the humour in the film comes from his facial expressions.

The animation is really spectacular. You can see where they used computers, but it doesn't stick out like sore thumbs as it does in some direct-to-video sequels. It gives a 3D look without spoiling the 2D feel. As for the horses, wow, you are in for one real ride when you follow a galloping herd of mustangs racing across the beautifully sculpted plains.

Thr music by Hans Zimmer is exciting and involving, and portrays the mood brilliantly. Bryan Adams music is good - it adds to the atmosphere, but I'd agree with some other reviewers here in that it did feel a little 'plastered over.' It needed to be a bit more synchronized with the film. Even if the lyrics are supposed to be metaphorical, they could still try and be more associated with what's going on.

All in all, Spirit is a great romp for anyone who loves horses, breath-taking animation or just wants a moving and spectacular experience. There are a few mini flaws, but if overlooked, you'll love this well crafted adventure.

In 2002, Spirited Away took home the award for Best Animated Feature Film - and rightly so. But when you are up against one of the greatest films ever made, its easy to get overlooked as was the also nominated Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron. Back before Dreamworks teamed up with PDI to perfect the computer animated fart joke and pop culture reference, Jeffrey Katzenberg's Dreamworks animated studio made beautiful traditionally animated films. Spirit presents the untamed frontier of North America where wild horses ran free. Throughout the film, the titular horse Spirit runs through gorgeous canyons and fields as he seeks simply to maintain his freedom. The animation truly captures the majesty of the mustang and though many seek to tame him, Spirit will not be broken.

The story of the film is fairly straight forward, and that's the beauty of it. There is not some ridiculous convoluted plot driving the movie, rather the simple desire of Spirit to feel the wind through his mane in the open fields. While the film is narrated by Spirit, during the movie, none of the animals including the horses actually speak. Instead, their artfully drawn eyes and body movements convey their thoughts. Especially now in 2006 with so many talking animal movies, it was nice to see an movie about animals that maintained some realism and did not strip the "heroes" of their dignity by making them spout out idiotic one-liners. The relationship that Spirit develops with Little Creek, a Native American that captures him, is also touching. There are so many things going for this film that hearkens back to simpler times. Unfortunately, there is one big thing against it... the music.

While a Bryan Adams song or two may have fit the mood of the film, it seems that every major plot development is accompanied by Bryan, and Bryan is just not that great (at least in my mind) to justify his monopoly of this film's soundtrack. It's the same problem that Disney's Tarzan ran into with Phil Collins. When a single artist sings so many songs in the film, they all tend to blend together. None of the songs is horrible, its just a little too much when all of them run back to back.

This may not be the greatest film ever made, but it's fantastic depiction of the American West and of the simple yearning to be free make it stand out. It's $73 million box office fell short of its $80 million budget, but hopefully the timeless nature of this films subject matter will allow Spirit to age well and gain appreciation over time while some of Dreamwork's other films become horribly outdated. There really aren't a lot of animated films about horses, but this one does the species proud, and if it weren't for Bryan Adams overload, Spirit would probably earn even higher than its B+.

I think this is one of the most underappreciated animated films, ever. People tend to overlook this little gem, mostly due to the fact that the animals don't talk. I think that it's a refreshing change to all of the talking animal movies out there. Don't get me wrong; I love The Lion King and Bambi, but the animation and scenery in this film speak for themselves. If you're in dire need of hearing some sort of voice, the delightful songs by Bryan Adams move the film along beautifully, and truly capture the plight, joy, and sadness the characters convey. It's such a beautiful movie, that you forget the horses don't "speak" (although Matt Damon provides some narration as Spirit, which in my opinion, is unecessary). Sure it's predictable, but after the magnificent opening sequence (one of the most beautiful animated sequences ever), you don't even think about it. You're just sucked into the film with the powerful animation.
Maybe not worth seeing if you're looking for talking animals or a lot of humour, but if you're willing to sit back and just enjoy the visuals, then it's definitely worth seeing.

Good movie. Great ( if not quite angular ) animation. Good CG. Good music. Good story. Overall, this is a pretty darn good film, except it gets _really_ old _really_ fast. Take care to leave at least a week-long gap between viewings, or MAN will you get sick of it.
The basic plot can be outlined like so: Spirit runs, gets caught, runs some more, insert romantic subplot here and friendship with Indian, runs some more, goes home ( while running ). Needless to say you won't have to worry about missing a shot of Spirit running, because such sequences make up about 50 of the entire movie. That's one thing that brings the rating down: the fact that at many points in the film it seemed too entered on the visuals rather than the actual plot. On that note, a lot of the CG backgrounds clashed pretty badly with the 2D characters exploring them.
Now we move into music. Hans Zimmer did an absolutely fabulous job with the score ( one major flaw with the ST was that it was compiled mostly of songs and not enough score ). The songs were good, but it would have been much more beneficial if the producers could have picked more than one person to do the songs, just to break the monotony ( sort of like they did in Brother Bear; the Blind Boys of Alabama were a welcome break from Phil Collins' songs ).
Monotony- a word that pretty well describes this movie. It's amazing how a film in which the characters move so quickly can be paced so slowly. It has its moments of heart and stunning visuals, but the pacing of the movie sort of fails. I always find it difficult to sit through the entire movie at once, and when the film is so good and solid aside from dull pacing, that really shouldn't happen.
All in all, this is a fairly balanced movie. Underappreciated- I guess I'll go with that. The good, in the end, outweighs the bad. This is certainly a title worth checking out ( don't let the rancid cover art deter you ).

Edit: Lo and behold! Another Jurassic Park ref in the beginning sequence! ( the first I pointed out being in Brother Bear )

Boring. Nice to look at but a boring movie all together. The songs were very weak also.
James

I flat out loved this movie, and it's joined my list of favorites, despite the fact that it's quite different from other animated animal films I've seen.

At first I was pretty taken aback when I discovered that the horses _don't talk_. I've never seen a movie where the main character is an animal that didn't involve the 'anthropomorphic wise-cracking character that speaks perfect fluent English' representation, so I immediately shrieked "DUD!" But as the movie progressed I found that the horses didn't _need_ to talk -- their emotions are expressed perfectly through normal animal noises, body language, and facial expressions, which is pretty darn good for an animated movie.

The animation is flawless, the scenery and characters themselves beautifully designed, and they actually look proportionate...don't see that too often. There aren't any character songs or the like, more like background music, but the music fits in perfectly with the events of the story, and it's a nice change reminiscent of an live action movie.

The story itself is also well done -- I'd expected it to cross into the predictable 'savage cruelty of the white man' plot that drives me wild because it's overdone, so the twist at the end was very surprising to me.

I saw this when I was 16 and turned around and watched it twice in a row...and if you can get a teenager to admit to watching an animated movie twice within six hours I'd say it's a winner on some level!

The basic story about a horse, his life, and his refusal to be broken is good- which is fortunate, because otherwise (in my eyes) this movie doesn't have a lot going for it.

I remember when I first rented it, I felt like I was watching paintings- beautiful paintings, but still paintings. I mean, Buck from "Home on the Range" was extremely stylized (to the point of having triangles for hooves) and didn't act like a real horse (heck, he was doing kung fu moves) yet while I was watching I felt like he was more ALIVE than Spirit, it FELT more real. Maybe I'm crazy but that the way I felt. And the bald eagle- AWFUL!! Sitka (from Brother Bear) looked more realistic when he's in spirit form!!! Plus as stated before, the backgrounds crash horribly with the characters.

Okay, now onto my loudest gripe about the film: the fact that the horses don't speak. Sure, they have human eyes and eyebrows, the talk with expressions (which were good, that I begrudgingly give them) and Spirit can talk to us (the audience) but no- they can't speak. In retrospect, I don't think it was so much that the animals don't speak- that's happened in more Disney films than people think (examples: Bambi's rival Ronno doesn't speak, the animals in Snow White don't talk, the animals in Peter Pan don't talk, only the gorillas in "Tarzan speak, etc.)- as it was that the main characters can't talk, thus creating many areas of boredom.

Next topic, songs. On the special features they said about how they wanted the songs to be "metaphoric"- A.K.A. one of the worse ideas ever. The only song I enjoyed was "You Can't Take Me", the rest I just tolerated (and "Get Off Of My Back" outstays its welcome). And if the songs are supposed to be Spirit's thoughts, why would be using such metaphors as "if you catch a wave/you're never gonna ride it" and "I'm a soldier now/going into battle"? Wouldn't he be making more horsey metaphors?

Okay okay, enough whining. As my Mom put it “If you didn’t like it so much, why did you buy the DVD?” The story, as I said before, is excellent- it saves the film. The characters are appealing (well not much Spirit once he's a stallion but Rain and the others), the humor (what little there is) is good, and DreamWorks does deserve a pat on the back for having a horse as the main character (they are hard to draw) and doing research.

To summarize: my thoughts on this movie can be paraphrased from an Aesop's fable's moral: "The good should always outweigh the bad". "Spirit" does that- a good movie, but not a classic.

I found this movie to be rather dull in all honesty. The only parts I enjoyed about this movie were the animation and the soundrack, which are awesome. I think that Spirit had some of the best animation I've seen from Dreamworks (even if the horses were a little squarish). Now if they could have gotten a story to match the animation it would have been great, but they didn't. One thing that annoyed me was Spirit could narrate, but didn't talk. Everything was in "horesy language". They didn't even let you know what the horses were saying to each other. All you'd get to hear was neighing when any of the horses communicated. The only way you could tell what they were feeling was by their expressions, which were good, but not enough for someone who likes dialogue. It followed the life of one horse and what happened to him, and I really couldn't see a real plot to the movie. There was no great dialogue or really anything too memorable. It's ok for a one time viewing, but I don't think I'd buy it.