Black Beauty Review – A Mustang Spirit Can Never Be Broken

After getting over an initial bump of boredom, Black Beauty takes you through a rollercoaster of emotions.

What Happens in Black Beauty?

Beauty is a wild mustang that loves the freedom of the mountains. She loves it so much that she decided to explore further down the meadows to areas her family had stayed away from. This proves to be super dangerous as she is found by a group of humans that are searching for the wild mustangs.

The group returns with their horses and a helicopter to push the horses into the pens that lay waiting for the panicked group of wild horses. Beauty gets separated from her mother in the fray, and the powerful horse is equally scared and angry with herself. Unsure of where she is and what is going to happen, Beauty learns quickly that humans are not her friends and she is in danger.

Who Are The Characters in Black Beauty?

Beauty is a mustang who lives in the wild with her family and she loves her life. Beauty is strong and resilient throughout her life as we see her develop strong relationships with a few owners, but her favourite is a girl named Jo.

Jo meets Beauty after losing her parents and being sent to live with her Uncle John.  Jo at first is quite standoffish as she does not want to be at her uncle’s ranch. She begins to develop a relationship with Beauty and the audience starts to see she is quite kind, and she loves her time with Beauty.

John, Jo’s uncle and the man who bought Beauty, is a good man who runs a horse sanctuary where he trains horses and he is very good when it comes to the horses but struggles to connect with Jo. When Jo starts to develop her relationship with Beauty, it opens up the opportunity for John to connect with her by showing her how to train a horse.

Black Beauty Review

Black Beauty was a pretty good movie overall. Before I get into the positives, I first want to get the negatives out of the way. The main issue was the length of the beginning. Now, I understand the beginning of the movie was to give context to the relationship between Beauty and Jo and to develop this bond that transcends beyond human and horse love.

It was to show the unbreakable bond between Beauty and Jo. Yet, the length of that whole portion had left me uninterested. There were a few scenes that caught my attention like Jo opening up to her uncle and Beauty’s development, but overall, I felt that section was long.

Now, with that out of the way, let us dive into the great points of this movie, because trust me, there were lots. The first great thing was the bond that Jo and Beauty develop over the course of the movie. They had a natural and symbiotic relationship; both were able to help each other at their worst.

This is all due to great character writing and development. Besides just Jo and Beauty, the development of side characters was also well done. Even though some of them didn’t get much time in the spotlight, they still had good backgrounds and were differentiated from one another.

Now, moving on to storytelling, the plot and the themes developed were wonderful. The messages of hope and the power of strong bonds were wonderfully portrayed. And because of that alone, Black Beauty is worth a watch.

Just as a side note, I wish they developed or shown some of the story of what happened to Jo after Beauty was taken away. I would have loved to see what happened to Georgina and her mother.

Overall, this movie was a good watch. After getting over that initial bump of boredom, the movie takes you through a rollercoaster of emotions.