#224: Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron

Release Date: May 24th, 2002

Format: DVD

Written by: John Fusco

Directed by: Kelly Asbury and Lorna Cook

3.5 Stars

There’s something refreshingly pure about 2002’s Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron. The story, from a script by John Fusco, successfully captures the majesty of wild horses in the American West. Fusco utilizes sparse voiceover narration (Matt Damon) as the titular stallion, Spirit, but this is largely a silent movie that relies on bold animation and driving music.

That bold animation is interesting to view now, twenty plus years since the film’s release. A mix of CGI and hand drawn horse and human animation, the visuals don’t look like the predominant Disney or Pixar works of that early 2000s. It’s a beautifully rendered and visually confident film. You can tell that directors Kelly Asbury and Lorna Cook sensed they had something special in all of these scenes of a hard-charging Spirit, running free in the meadows and fields of the untamed West. Why muddy up the vibe with wacky Disney-style side characters or layered Pixar-pathos? They gamble a large part of the movie on their animators and a simple story with simple, silent archetypes. It pays off.

Accompanying the visuals is a score by Hans Zimmer and an original soundtrack by Bryan Adams. Both musicians lend the film a classic Americana feel. It’s some pretty rousing stuff. I wonder how many millennial girls can credit their “horse girl energy” to watching Spirit in the early 2000s? (I personally know one, and she couldn’t contain herself from singing along to most of these songs).

Sure, there’s an argument to be made that Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron is less than ambitious storytelling, but I think that’s missing the point. Like its title character, the movie finds its purpose in simply running free across the Wild West.