We love horse movies at our house. I know you’re shocked. To use one of my most used and well worn Disney quotations, “Why don’t I have a heart attack and die from NOT surprise?” But you might be surprised to hear that we don’t love ALL horse movies. In fact some of them down right drive me crazy.
This topic came up on a Facebook group I am a member of that is made up of a bunch of horse crazy women from all over the globe. Someone happened to bring up and mention how the cartoon, “Spirit Riding Free” drove her crazy. Mostly because the animations were so wrong - including where they showed the saddle going on the horse and other tack issues. Now, being as my kids are all quite a bit older than the targeted audience of this cartoon, I have not seen it. So I googled images and I’ll be honest that it wasn’t easy to find one that showed these tack issues she spoke of. And then I saw this one. First of all, Spirit does NOT have a big old white blaze.
So from what I can tell, there are no girths whatsoever on those saddles. That means they are staying on with what? Spit? Super glue? A prayer? I need more than that for my saddle. Oh wait - on second glance I do see a girth on the palomino (horse on the left), way back there by the flank. You know, where they put the bucking strap on broncs…. Oh well - there are far too many animated children anyway, we can kill off a few by attaching the girth at the back of the saddle, and therefore the horse. Or hey - maybe we can kill off some ACTUAL kids if they go out and saddle their pony like that. That never happens you say? Umm.. I had a picture saved for ages that a person had posted in a sale ad with the bridle literally on backwards. Brow band as a throat latch, bit upside down backwards. It happens in real life.
In good news - none of these horses apparently needs a bit so they are pretty broke. They have on full headstalls, with nosebands, even the western horses (who would virtually never have a noseband) but no bits. In fact, I’m not sure what kind of bridles these even are, there are no browbands. More like a halter with reins attached I guess? Interesting.
What other horse movies upset us? Well War Horse for one. The part where he trains the big old warmblood to do everything he wants it to by offering it oats. Yeah, that’s SUPER realistic (she says with a heavy dose of sarcasm). Or my other favorite scene, where he is trying to get Joey to plow the rocky field and gets in front of him, looks him in the eye and says, “Do it for me, Joey!” Joey then digs in and plows the field for him. I’ve tried this training tactic. It doesn’t work. China just looked at me and sneezed, then proceeded to go back to being a snot.
Or how about Flicka. Excellent book. Not half bad original film back in the ‘40’s. The remake a few years ago; God Damn Awful. Right down to the girl (not the boy main character it should have been) training the shiny black mustang to ride with just apples and love. Do you know what apples and love get you when training a wild mustang? Dead. They get you dead.
Want to know something else that really bugs me about horse movies? Bad stand ins. I get that they can’t use the same horse for the entire movie. But the same breed of horse would be nice. Same color maybe? I remember a horse movie about a jumper. It was a gray. A very white gray for all the jumping scenes and a very gray gray for about everything else. Complete with a darker mane and tail. I mean c’mon. They sell spray paint for horses. The very least you could do it darken up the darn jumper.
And why is the theme of every horse movie almost exactly the same? Doesn't stop us from watching them. Like Libby says, "I know that the girl is going to have major daddy issues and take some unbroke, wild horse and end the movie with winning some form of competition and resolving her daddy issues to make them one big happy family. I'm still gonna watch it." Yep. Nailed about every horse movie on the head, right there. Even Dreamer, and that's one horse movie I actually liked.
There are a lot of movies that we love though too. Some of them what you would call the traditional blockbusters. I don’t think I can ever watch Secretariat enough. I don’t know how many times I’ve watched the scene from the Belmont where he pulls away from Sham, the actual footage on youtube or the movie footage, I still get goosebumps. And then there is the overdramatized, but still excellent story of Seabiscuit. Who doesn’t love a little guy beats Goliath story? Love that little horse and I love how close it is to the very good book.
There are others of course that we love but I won’t even begin to bore you all with a personal review of each. Even the ones that have scenes that drive me crazy still have shiny pretty horses. So I guess a bad horse movie is still a pretty darn good movie in our book.
PS - I googled "horse movie meme" and got this. I'm not even disappointed.
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