Spirit Untamed
A light, heartwarming kids film.
Lucky Prescott (Isabela Merced) is a young woman adrift from her home. She travels around with her Aunt Cora (Julianne Moore), being schooled in etiquette and the like. But she longs for her old life - the life in a frontier land with her father and mother. That life was stripped from her when her mother had an accident and died while riding her horse, and her bereft father Jim (Jake Gyllenhaal) sent her away to keep her safe. But Lucky’s life is about to change, as she heads back to that frontier town for the summer. Despite Jim’s warnings to his daughter, she strikes up a series of local friendships, including one with a wild stallion called Spirit. With some nefarious horse-nappers in the region, and her safety-first father nipping at her heels, Lucky has to learn how to be who she truly is to save Spirit’s family.
Spirit Untamed has a myriad of classic animation tropes from films that have been there and done it before looming over its head. But the familiarity of these messages, plot points and jokes shouldn’t deter you from what, at heart, is a really engaging, beautifully rendered and affecting film.
The voice cast is tremendous, with some huge names in there (although Eiza Gonzalez seems an odd choice for a character that has literally a single line in the film). Merced is an obvious standout, but Gyllenhaal too does well.
One of the most important measures of a film like this is how the kids in the audience react, and we can say that in our screening, they were engaged throughout this 88 minute romp, laughing at all of the right places, and cheering on Lucky when the time came. That’s a really encouraging sign for how this film might perform with small children.
The other impressive thing about Spirit Untamed is how pretty it is. The film blends two styles of animation, with a 3D realism to the bulk of the film at odds with a hand painted 2D style when showcasing the frontier vistas. It could have been quite jarring, but instead provides a handful of moments throughout the film where you get to sit back and reassess how incredible the animation on screen is. It also successfully evokes similar emotion to what sweeping vistas of US frontiers provoke in a standard film.
In the end, Spirit Untamed probably won’t stay with you long after watching, but while you are in the cinema you’ll be laughing, engaged and maybe even shedding a tear or two.
