A Major Disappointment

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

This movie starts out well and moves along well, until Black Beauty meets the circus. After that the movie takes on a silly tone that does not make sense to it's early pace.After Black Beauty joins the circus, it was one travesty event after another with bad accents, bad fighting. Corny music. It's not even worth the cheap price I paid for the DVD.Very disappointed, if this was supposed to be an adaptation of someones novel they would be screaming about it.It is unfortunate I can not return open DVDs to the store, even at $2.00(US) it's bad enough to return.

Why oh why did they decided to throw away the classic story and come up with their own version? It feels to me they just stole the title and thought whoever wrote the script can do better than Anna Sewell. My daughter just read the classic story and wanted to watch a movie version. What disappointment we had when it was apparent that we weren't watching 'Black Beauty' but a bastardized story with less than good acting. All through the movie we both wondered aloud whether we had ordered a wrong movie by mistake. Almost all of the characters in the book are absent and the most egregious omission is that the horse is not the narrator. The top billed Mark Lester was less than himself and only in the movie briefly. The other characters are mostly one dimensional and their stories are only glossed over. Of course this is not a miniseries and probably couldn't delve into all of their stories but some story transitions leave me wanting something more. ********* Spoiler ********** I thought I heard the soldier who briefly owns Black Beauty volunteered to go to India but in the battle scene it is clear that the people he is fighting are not Indians. Oh, and how did this movie got a 'G' rating with such violent battle scene? Someone should have warned me and my eight year old daughter. Viewers who want to watch a movie based on the book should be warned that this one ain't so.

1st watched 11/26/2004 - 2 out of 10(Dir-James Hill): Lazy telling of celebrated novel about the adventures of an almost completely black horse. The adventures are huge, but they are played out very un-magnificently with some scenes being so bad that the movie's almost worthy of turkey status especially during a couple silly love scenes. It all works out in the end with the horse coming back to his starting location with his grown-up original owner but the only good thing this movie does is make you feel bad for the horse. The problem is that at points in this movie even he looks bewildered and fatigued at being a part of this slow-moving fiasco.

This is an excellent little horsey film with Mark Lester, the angel-faced victim of Bill Sykes (Oliver!), now playing the farm boy on what looks like Exmoor or somewhere similar (perhaps Scotland). His nemesis this time is the terrible, sadistic Sam Greene (Patrick Mower) whose mission is to wreak havoc on everyone on his newly-inherited estate following the death of his altruistic father.Really, it's a bit of a naturalist film, with the actual birth of Black Beauty himself shown and lots of delightful shots of rural, country life in England amidst classical English landscape. There really is some fine cinematography with sweeping panoramic landscapes, etc. The Pro-Hunting enthusiasts in England would now love this film and there are tons of shots of bands of red tunic huntsmen all over the place, with packs of dogs and stuff in hot pursuit.However, the editing is clumsy and contrived and the director seems to want to create some sort of pseudo-art film, with lots of slow motion shots of hunting accompanied by a cheesy, amateurish soundtrack.