88 min | PG | June 4, 2021 | Universal Pictures
Lucky Prescott leaves the city for a dusty frontier town and bonds with a wild mustang named Spirit. There is a defiant girl, a stubborn horse, and a runaway train. The horse has more personality than the screenplay.
Lucky Prescott is a city girl shipped off to the frontier town where her estranged father works the railroad. She meets a wild mustang named Spirit and refuses to let anyone break him. Spirit Untamed reboots the 2002 hand-drawn film and trades its wordless animal point of view for a conventional girl-and-her-horse adventure. The original told its story through the horse. This version hands everything to a human protagonist and a plot about family, belonging, and a cattle rustler’s scheme. The result is a coming-of-age story that hits every beat you expect and none you don’t.
Isabela Merced voices Lucky with energy and impatience. She plays a kid who has been passed between relatives and wears her defiance as armor. Julianne Moore voices Aunt Cora as the buttoned-up guardian who softens on schedule. Marsai Martin and Mckenna Grace voice Prudence and Abigail, the local girls who become Lucky’s riding companions, and they give the trio an easy rapport. Walton Goggins voices the rustler Hendricks with a flat menace that the script never lets off the leash. Jake Gyllenhaal voices Lucky’s father Jim with a distance that the film resolves too neatly.
Elaine Bogan directs from a script by Aury Wallington and Kristin Hahn. The computer animation renders horses with smooth, rounded surfaces and a bright, storybook palette that flattens the frontier into a theme-park version of the West. The character models favor large eyes and soft edges built for a young audience. The action set pieces, a cliffside chase and a runaway train, are staged with clear geography and competent timing. The score swells on cue and tells you exactly how to feel in every scene. Nothing here takes a visual or musical risk.
This is a film engineered for very young children and no one else. It moves quickly, keeps the stakes legible, and never asks the audience to sit with discomfort. The emotional arc between Lucky and her father is sketched rather than earned. Spirit himself is a likable presence, but the movie around him plays it safe at every turn. It is pleasant, forgettable, and built to keep small kids occupied for an afternoon.