BB.5
(out of 5)
Beautifully animated but emotionally dull adventure film about the experiences of a horse living on the brink of modernized America. Enjoying his life as a wild mustang on the plains of the uninhabited west, the horse of the title is captured by lawmen who put him into service for the U.S. cavalry until he escapes. On his journey home, he is taken by the American postal service before befriending a Native who has been mistreated by the law and helps him rejoin his own people. Bryan Adams’s songs are pretty and Hans Zimmer’s score exciting, but the story has no high points and the narration by Matt Damon, which is the only personal voice of the horse that we get to hear, is unmotivated. The horse itself, however, is better drawn than just about any animal of an equestrian nature that has been seen in animated film before; he moves smoothly and in a realistic manner that suggests that much hard work went into creating him as so lifelike a vision.
DreamWorks Animation, DreamWorks
USA, 2002
Directed by Kelly Asbury, Lorna Cook
Screenplay by John Fusco
Produced by Jeffrey Katzenberg, Mireille Soria
Music by Hans Zimmer
Production Design by Kathy Altieri
Film Editing by Clare De Chenu, Nick Fletcher
