Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002)
**½/****
screenplay by John Fusco
directed by Kelly Asbury and Lorna Cook
by Walter Chaw Earning major points for its revisionist understanding of the impact the rail had on the spoiling of the West (briefly positing its equine hero as one part Burt Lancaster from The Train and one part William Blake), DreamWorks’ return to cel (albeit computer-assisted) animation is the surprisingly dark and unintentionally twisted Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron. The film is an endlessly disquieting Oedipal construct in which Spirit’s absent-from-pre-birth father is the former king of a herd of wild horses, the mantle of which the virile Spirit, with his mother doe-eyed at his side (!), assumes to the tune of a newly-penned anthem from dinosaur Canuck rocker Bryan Adams. I waited with baited breath to see how mama’s foal Spirit would break his new Oedipal split (hot filly Rain) to “Jocasta,” but the picture fumbles the potent moment with a coy mane flip and a sexy-quick gallop.