A Movie about a Horse

We went to go see War Horse last Saturday night, because my mom wanted to see something and it was the only thing that looked interesting to her. My father and I were more hesitant, because the title itself seemed unimpressive, but it had Speilberg's name on it and we don't go out to see movies enough for it not to be a treat whenever we do. Committed blogger that I am, I vowed to write my review on it before we even got to the theater.

The movie, based on a book by Micheal Morpurgo, is about the life of a young horse, named 'Joey' by his first owner, before and during The Great War (WWI). The story is episodic, as the horse passes through different hands, on both sides of the battlefront. It's very similar to other 'through the eyes of the animal' type stories, such as Call of the Wild or Black Beauty, and even seems to contain a direct visual reference to the later, as Joey befriends a beautiful black horse while in the English cavalry, and they spend most of the rest of the movie together.

I didn't really know much about the movie before going in, other than that it was, as the title so boldly indicated, about a war horse. The title itself seems to be the first fault of the story; it seemed too lofty and overly dramatic. It turns out the title pretty closely matches the tone of the movie as well.

Before seeing the movie, there were also a couple actors I knew to look for, and I ended up spending the first half hour scanning ever face. This turned out to be pointless, as both of the actors I knew were rather prominent characters, but I did end up noticing a lot of actors who I thought I recognized as well.

The reason why I spent the first thirty minutes of the movie scanning faces, however, was because there was little else to do. Not to seem patronizing, but story is actually very simple, and though the exposition given during this segment of the movie, while Joey is still with his first owner, is important, it's also something that I figured out in a couple minutes. Boy meets horse; boy and horse have special bond; horse is wonderful.

That last bit is actually one of two major messages of the movie, the other message being something about hope and optimism. Don't get me wrong; hope and optimism are great, and it's definitely nice seeing more optimistic movies in the theaters, especially ones that aren't specifically geared towards kids.

The 'hope and optimism' messages really seemed to be drowned out by the 'this horse is wonderful' message, however. Everything powerful and great throughout the story is done by the horse; the horse doesn't seem to me to inspire others to be great, he just amazes others by his own greatness.

That can be forgiven, however, when you remember that this movie is based off a children's book, with ten-year-old readers in mind. I also imagine this story might be well loved among the horse lovers, and everyone who enjoys anti-war sentiment. Not that I don't fall in either of those categories; I like horses as much as I like other animals, but while I agree that war is horrible, I'm not such a fan of pseudo-political pieces that try to convince us all of something most of us already agree with.

I'm also not a fan of personified animals, at least not when they're portrayed by real life animal 'actors'. Cartoons or books about talking animals is one thing; filming a real live animal and attempting to show it having human emotions seems really corny. I think the fact that Joey never talked made it even worse, because if he did talk (or even narrate, like Spirit, probably my favorite eyes-of-the-animal movie), it would have been obvious that they meant the horse to be unrealistic.

I was also a bit confused about the movie's rating. Yes, it was a war movie, but the war scenes were relatively mild; any character death, horse or human, was either portrayed off-screen, obscured, or shown as a nameless soldier falling mid-run, with no blood or gore at all. While this isn't really a children's movie per se, it is a movie I wouldn't mind my children watching, and it's definitely a movie children would be able to get something out of (I'm speaking here about older children, 8-12).

Despite everything negative I might say about his movie, it wasn't wholly bad. The uplifting message was nice, and it was definitely an entertaining story, albeit one lacking in real depth. I'd be willing to see this again, and I'd recommend seeing it at least once (though, note, if you're a crier, be prepared to cry). While it's a disappointing Spielberg movie, it's an OK movie overal.