Black Beauty
“A wise horse once told me that a mustang spirit can never be broken. That it has the strength of the ocean, and lives forever, like the wind.
Black Beauty
Summary:
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 in 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.
Characters:
Beauty is a mustang who lives in the wild with her family and she loves her life until one day she accidentally leads some ranchers to her family and they are corralled. Beauty is then sold to a nice man named John and she proves to be a willful, and stubborn horse who does not want to lose her mustang spirit. 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 at first. 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.
Austin: 8.7/10
I enjoyed this movie. It has a perfect mix of ups and downs, and it plays with your emotions. The plot itself is well written, and it is super captivating. It is one of the most emotional movies I’ve seen in awhile, and the writers do a great job of making you fall for Beauty and Jo quickly. This kind of emotional attachment makes the ups and downs that much more powerful. The dialogue feels a little bit weird and unnatural at the beginning, but as the movie progresses it gets a lot better. While this plot is really interesting, and it keeps you unsure of what is coming next, there are a couple of points in the back half that don’t hold the same quality of the movie that the beginning and the end have. That being said, I loved the way this movie is developed from the beginning and the way we learn about the characters. The ending comes full circle, and I thought it was one of the more satisfactory endings, leaving very little in the air and closing the book on this story.
The actual story behind this movie is incredible, and the amount of time that passes during the two hours is remarkable. The writers did a really good job to craft a movie that accomplished three things without sacrificing anything else. It wasn’t incredibly long, jammed packed with different events, and it didn’t feel rushed or underdeveloped. Typically, a movie does one or two of those well, but the quality movies manage to pull all three off.
This is a pretty good movie from Disney, and I enjoyed it. It has a feel-good vibe, with a good mix of downfalls that keep your emotions honest. Regardless of which “audience bracket” you find yourself in, I recommend checking this one out!
Sebastian: 8.6/10
Right from the start this movie surprised me as I did not realize that Beauty was the protagonist and she had narration so we understood what she was saying. I think this was a good movie with some engaging characters that are easy to connect with.
Beauty as a character was fun to follow as she has lots of energy, spirit and her narration is well used and helps us connect to Beauty in a way that movies that don’t show the animal sometimes can’t. I liked that this was Beauty’s story as most stories of this kind take place almost entirely from the humans’ perspective so it was nice to actually have the animal be the one who has the focus and it adds a spin to the format that I enjoyed watching. Jo and John are also good characters though we spend less time with them I felt that I understood them and I felt for both of them. I feel that this film executed its heartwarming nature quite well with many touching moments throughout. I liked that we go to see more than Beauty’s time with Jo’s and we got to see all the stages of her life and how they differed. The film I felt showed nature quite well with some great landscape shots at the beginning and some nice ones throughout. This is definitely a feel-good Disney movie that will make you feel all fuzzy inside and I felt for the characters and loved when they were together.
All in all, I thought this was definitely a good time with plenty of great moments that I will recommend for any family who wants a fun movie.
Nathanyal: 8.5/10
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. Still, the length of that whole scene had left me uninterested many times. 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 scene 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 that 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, this movie 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 boring, the movie takes you through a rollercoaster of emotions.
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