Michael's Movie Grade: B+
An excellent feel good movie.
The main job of a feel good movie is obviously to make the viewer feel good and judged by this standard the film does a darn good job. Much of this is due to our main character. Thanks both to the script and Toni Collette's performance, the character is instantly likable. This is true even at the start of the film when she is bored of life. The transformation between her earlier bored self and her latter passionate about life self is incredibly well done. It does not happen instantaneously. Instead we see her gradually come further out of her shell as she becomes more and more attached to the horse. The first time we see a big smile on her face, we are overcome with joy because the movie has fully earned even this seemingly small moment. Of course it has long been said that you can't have happiness without sadness. This movie knows and understands that saying. Along with the moments of great joy, we also have moments that are not so joyful. In the end we connect with these characters more because we have felt both joy and sadness with them. However this of course does not mean the filmmakers ever forget what kind of movie this is and I definitely had a big smile on my face through much of this film.
The humor in this movie can be a bit hit or miss. There are moments were it is very funny and other times when the jokes fall a little flat. Still the funny jokes make up for the misses.
This movie has two real problems though. The first of these is that the horse simply has too many owners, to make them all well rounded characters in the length of a less than two hour movie. Therefore some of them are very well defined, while others come off as stereotypes of movie characters. There is also the fact that we have seen this movie too many times to not know what is going to happen in any given scene.
All in all if you want to go to the movies and put a smile on your face when you are there, this film will do a darn good job of that.
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