Ok, I saw it last night and I thought it was “sweet” … Not in a good way…sweet like saccharin sweet like too much cake..and totally off on most matters concerning horses.
I loved ET and Steven Spielberg is a master of beautiful cinematography and it shows in this film…but if you know horses it becomes cartoonish at best. One scene even has an expression on the horses face that looks sad and imploring…this had to have been computer generated… This was what I might call a “Herbie The Lovebug” moment.
A list of dumb horse stuff in this film:
1) Where was the manure? When the Germans were coming and the girl hid the horses how come there was no poop to give them away?
2) Did she really run both horses up the stairs to her bedroom? Then they made no noise on the hardwood floor? And no poop? Anyone that has ever loaded a horse into a trailer knows this staircase idea probably would not have gone well..and since horses poop when they are nervous…well, you know..
3) The hooves were totally trimmed like a show horse…when did that happen? There were no farriers around.
4) They kept calling this horse a Thoroughbred. No way. It was clearly a Warmblood.
5) They talked about how muscled he was…um…no he wasn’t. He looked like he had never done any work of any kind…and I don’t mean plowing.. I mean trotting hills, exercising etc…but he did have a nice neck, I’ll give him that.
6) The training scenes….OMG…that was gag-worthy…horses do not come to you because you whistle. You might train them to, but it would not be because you stood 12 feet away and said, “Come!” like training a dog.. There would be lots of treats involved and months of steady training work.
Ok…I got most of it out of my system. BTW, if you love horses and want to see something where the horse stuff is real…watch the old TV series, “Wildfire” on Netflix. The first few episodes miss a little, but then they must have gotten a good advisor, because after that, it is spot on.
The acting and story line is lightweight, but I watched the whole series just to see the equine part done so well.
That’s it. My gripe session is done!
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