Spirit Untamed (2021)

(On Cable TV, December 2021) Paradoxically, the reason Spirit Untamed interested me is also why it left me wanting. My daughter being the right age for it, I ended up seeing the majority of the Spirit Riding Free TV show — a rather pleasant and fun computer-animated series about three girls growing up in a small Western town, with plenty of horses to ride along the way. It was better than most family shows I have seen over the past few years. So, the news of a new Spirit movie based on the series was the kind of thing to become mandatory viewing in my household. Except that… well, Spirit Untamed essentially retells the beginning of the series with similar (but different) characters, except with a bigger budget, some “name” voice talent and a better understanding of where the story could go. It’s not badly made — the computer animation quality is significantly higher, even if not up to the standards set by most theatrically released computer-animated films. It’s likable enough: the lead character is a plucky young woman, she’s surrounded by other good supporting characters and the film runs through the motions of a series-pilot adventure well enough. But why should we bother? The six seasons of the series are still there, and the visual style of the film isn’t that different from the series — so why does it exist? It’s neither a sequel nor a complete reboot, and I’m not even measuring it against the original 2002 film. “It’s okay, I guess” is a stupefyingly low bar to clear for a film these days, and Spirit Untamed barely justifies its own existence.