Movie Review: Flicka

Flicka (2006) 

Directed by Michael Mayer

Written by Mark Rosenthal, Lawrence Konner

Starring Alison Lohman, Tim McGraw, Maria Bello, Ryan Kwanten

Release Date October 20th, 2006

Published October 22nd, 2006

My Friend Flicka starring Roddy McDowell is a family movie staple. The story of a troubled boy and the horse who saved his life and inspired him is a staple of the family movie genre, a story reformed and retold in a number of different ways. More than 50 years later Flicka returns to the big screen, a different gender at it's center, but the same basic story of family, growing up and beautiful horses in place.

Empty and uninspired, this new Flicka is, thankfully, not a total rehash of the original film but is not much of an improvement either.

16 year old Katie (Alison Lohman) has just flunked her end of year exam. Rather than writing the essay required of her, Katie spent 2 hours staring out the window dreaming of her horses back on her family farm. She is returning home when the test is over and will once again get to feel the wind in her hair on the back of a horse, her favorite feeling in the world.

Katie returns home to a loving family that includes her father; Rob (Tiim Mcraw), Mom; Nell (Maria Bello) and older brother; Howard (Ryan Kwanten). Her father soon finds out that she has failed the important test and the testy dynamic of this father-daughter relationship is set. Despite dad's admonitions, the first chance Katie gets she is on the back of a horse and hitting the backwoods trails.

It is on this backwoods jaunt that Katie comes across a wild black mustang that she comes to call Flicka. Her father, fearing a mustang that might rattle his domesticated quarter horses, orders Katie to stay away from the mustang. However, when the mustang rescues Katie from a cougar attack, he is brought to the farm. Can Katie train Flicka and come to ride her or will dad sell Flicka to a rodeo manager (Nick Searcy) who has developed a dangerous new sport around wild horses.

If you think that the horse's wild, untamed spirit matches that of our heroine, well, of course your right. That is the most basic distillation of the plot. The horse and Katie are one in the same and that is the movie's fundamental premise. That, along with dad coming to understand his rebellious daughter and Katie beginning to grow up and reign in her wild ways make up a very simple three act structure as predictable as the alphabet.

Director Michael Mayer, whose Home At The End of the World was a lovely paean to a unique dysfunctional family, directs Flicka as if he were a factory film director his whole career. The film is machine made and polished, lifted from typical family movie molds and reaching theaters seemingly untouched from screenplay to screen.

Little girls love horses and Flicka bursts at the seams with loving shots of horses in stride. Flicka herself is a beautiful black horse with a gorgeous untamed mane and a wild spirit. Scenes of Alison Lohman riding Flicka framed against the mountain ranges of Wyoming with the sun beaming down are truly splendid images that will dazzle any horse lover.

Country star Tim McGraw acquits himself well as Katie's strict but loving father. His contribution to the films soundtrack however, the single My Little Girl, is one of the most gut wrenchingly sappy tunes this side of Barry Manilow. My Little Girl is the first song in McGraw's career that he has written and produced himself, he may want to consider never doing that again.

Rote family movie conventions rendered against a lovely sunlit, mountain background, Flicka is quite attractive but still an empty vessel. As the coming of age story of a troubled young girl; Flicka hits all of the expected notes and hits them about as well as they can be hit. If you can endure predictable, manufactured family movie devices meant to elicit tears and hugs, then Flicka is the movie for you.

Movie Review: Big Fish

Big Fish (2003) 

Directed by Tim Burton 

Written by John August 

Starring Ewan McGregor, Albert Finney, Billy Crudup, Jessica Lange, Steve Buscemi, Alison Lohman, Marion Cotillard, Danny Devito 

Release Date December 10th, 2003 

Published December 9th, 2003 

Tim Burton is a grand storyteller with a painter’s eye for color and depth. His films are often beautifully rendered and smartly written, a very rare combination. When his talent is fully engaged, as it was on his masterpieces Edward Scissorhands and Sleepy Hollow, he is an auteur that ranks with the all time greats. 

However, there are occasions when Burton seems less than engaged with his material, such as in his blockbuster works Planet Of The Apes and Batman Returns. His latest effort, Big Fish, looks like his kind of material but has moments when Burton doesn't feel fully committed to what is onscreen.

Ewan McGregor and Albert Finney portray Edward Bloom at two very different times in the man’s life. McGregor is the upstart Edward having grand adventures on his way to being something big. Finney's Edward is an old man on his deathbed, endless recalling the exploits of his young self.  Edward's son Will (Billy Crudup) has heard all of his father’s wild tales over and over again since he was a child. Now as his father's life is coming to an end, Will longs to know the truth. Instead, all he gets are more wild stories.

These dream sequences of young Edward Bloom are the kind of wild fantasies that Burton feels perfectly at home in. These stories include a real life giant played by Matthew McGrory, a circus with an eccentric ringleader (Danny Devito) and a city lost in time where there are no streets, just grass, and no one wears shoes. All of the stories are told with a magical veneer and there is slight sheen over the picture in these scenes that add to the dream imagery.

The central story to the flashbacks is Edward's romance with his wife Sandra, played by Alison Lohman and Jessica Lange. The romance is sweet, sincere and lovingly old fashioned and easily the film’s strongest subplot. What surrounds that story however, is somewhat unsatisfying.  We in the audience are like Edward's son, looking for a little bit of the real Edward Bloom. Listening to Albert Finney wheeze through a flashback setup, its not hard to see why Will is so exasperated with his father.

For his part Tim Burton isn't all that invested in his non-flashback scenes, preferring to put his artistic focus on the fantasy elements of the film. He seems to treat the other stuff as filler that give the flashbacks just enough context to get by. This makes for half of a very satisfying film.

The dreamlike fantasy flashbacks are artfully crafted fantasy, eye candy, humor and beauty. Unfortunately the other scenes, the non-fantasy scenes, are unsatisfying melodrama and good deal of screen chewing by Albert Finney. Billy Crudup does his best to ground these scenes, doing so well that he darn near saves the film with a terrific scene that takes place in a hospital room. It's a touching scene but not enough for me to give Big Fish a full recommendation. It’s not bad but this is not Burton at his best.