FINALLY Watched the one traditional animated film from Dreamworks I hadn't seen yet up until now.

I've seen Prince of Egypt, it's direct-to-video prequel, Road to El Dorado and even that lousy Sinbad film countless times, but I never bothered to check out that horse film Spirit. Today, I rented it for shits, to see if it was as "moving as Lion King" as its old commercials claimed and yeah, it was pretty fun I guess.

It had nice animation, great art(especially the backgrounds), the score was nice(for a Zimmer one at least) and it was interesting to not have the horses actually talk, although having Matt Damon play as the main character narrating the story is kind of weird considering the direction they went with the animals, but somehow fitting too.

I really could have done without all the Bryan Adams songs though. They weren't that memorable nor did they really match the visuals and make you connect with the characters, unlike say, all those Collins songs in Tarzan where they so skillfully represented the thoughts and feelings of Tarzan himself. In Spirit, it felt like those songs were made first and the film was an afterthought to promote them(they weren't).

Is it a bible story?

Nah. It's about a mustang trying to find his way back home. It ain't a bad film. Certainly more enjoyable than their last 2D entry Sinbad. Man, now that one was just disappointing(even if the animation totally kicked ass).

oh wow i totally misconceived what that was about.

It'd be hilarious if there was a Mustang epic in the freaking bible.

That chariot that took the dude to the stars must of had some epic Mustangs.

I saw Sinbad in theaters and never saw a glimpse of it again.

That damn film's failure killed 2D animation for DreamWorks and that really grinds me gears considering their traditional animation looked even better than most of the Disney renaissance films.

Their only flaw was that when it came to the CGI integrations in their 2D films, it didn't mesh well with the traditional animation(there are some exceptions though, like the chariot race scene in PoE).

Disney on the other hand did much better in that department. Hercules' Hydra(yeah, he was freaking CGI) and all that Deep Canvas background stuff in Tarzan and Treasure Planet blended really well with everything and didn't blatantly look like things produced on a computer, unlike Sinbad's giant monsters.

They did a great job on Hercules for sure. I'm not sure what went wrong with Sinbad.

Zero wrote:

They did a great job on Hercules for sure. I'm not sure what went wrong with Sinbad.

Because Hercules was Disney and Sinbad was Dreamworks. >_>

I've never seen the Sinbad movie and I always wondered if i was going wrong in not watching it. I guess I didn't miss much.

Nah, give the film a go. It's not bad, just meh compared to the rest of the traditionally animated DreamWorks films.

The Sinbad movie sucked cuz the real Sinbad didn't do the voice for him. Sinbad is the fucking man.

You mean that annoying dick in Jingle All the Way?

Y'know, through multiple watchings, Spirit somehow becomes more enjoyable. Hell, even some of the Bryan Adams songs become a little more tolerable(but some do still come off as weak).

But the more I watch, the more I get peeved that DW gave up 2D animation. It's such a loss considering they really did have the best in the industry when it came to animating characters and so forth.

Ellis wrote:

The Sinbad movie sucked cuz the real Sinbad didn't do the voice for him. Sinbad is the fucking man.

Agreed. The man needs more work these days.