The Young Black Stallion

Click to Buy	Ratings Summary (Scored out of a maximum of five)
	Audio		Video
	Goodies		Interface
	Value

The Movie

The story is very loosely based on the book The Young Black Stallion
published in 1989 by Walter and his son Steven Farley. Set in 1946, a
young Middle Eastern girl named Neera (Biana Tamimi) becomes stranded
in a North African desert while on a trek to her family home, and happens
upon a young colt. He leads her to fresh water and follows her as she
(miraculously) finds her way home over the endless sand dunes. She tames
the young horse and, disguised as a boy, races him to regain her grandfather’s
prizewinning horses, which were lost due to marauding soldiers.

© Disney. All rights reserved.

Much of the story resembles a replay of The Black Stallion. Unfortunately,
this film does not come close to capturing the emotion, the beauty, or
the excitement of the first film. The Young Black Stallion runs
a mere 50 minutes, which makes the story seem rushed, with character development
almost non-existent. Most of the story is told visually, so much of the
movie is long stretches of Neera riding The Black, or chasing The Black,
or searching for The Black without any dialogue. The Black Stallion
also used this technique, but to far better effect due to breathtaking
cinematography and music.

I imagine that this film would have a much greater impact seen in its
intended IMAX format, but seeing it on the small screen was not inspiring.
I also found it jarring to hear American accents next to the Middle Eastern
accents, with no attempt to put any native dialog with subtitles in. I
imagine the filmmakers thought they would lose young audiences by doing
this. As it was, young American actor Biana Tamimi stuck out like a sore
thumb, and potentially confuses viewers: Why is an American girl being
led through the desert? Is she just visiting?

On a more positive side, horse lovers of all ages will find something
to enjoy in The Young Black Stallion. The horses used in the film
are magnificent, and Biana Tamimi can ride very well. A stunt double was
not used in the racing scenes.

The Goodies

You know a movie is in trouble when the extras are more interesting than
the film itself. The Young Black Stallion includes six short featurettes,
the most unusual of which is a “prequel” to the prequel: a 14-minute
prologue to the film not included in the theatrical release. Entitled
“The Sire,” the prequel explains that The Black was sired by
a mythical horse just stepped out of a constellation to woo a lucky Arabian
mare. Told in storyboards and off-camera narrative with footage of the
romancing horses, this featurette will only appeal to hardcore equestrian
lovers. In “Finding Biana,” filmmakers explain the process they
used to find their young lead actress, Biana Tamimi. She had no previous
acting experience at all, and the director hired her after seeing some
footage of her riding her horse and reading some lines. He only met her
after the contracts had been signed and the film was ready to shoot. The
featurette shows clips of the video Tamimi sent to the filmmakers.

“Shooting in Nambia” and “Building the Casbah” are
mainly set production featurettes that detail how the filmmakers chose
their locations in Africa. Since they were shooting in extra-large IMAX
film, they had to be very careful of the tiny details a landscape would
show on the large screen. All the sets were built under very extreme heat
conditions by crews assembled from all over the world.

“A Story in IMAX” describes the differences between filming
in regular 35mm film and the large-format IMAX film. One major difference
is the very loud cameras used with large-format, which meant every word
of dialog had to be looped later in a recording studio. Luckily, they
weren’t filming Hamlet.

The “Big Black Horse” is a read-along that is a mostly still-picture
story recapping The Black Stallion with an option of having the
dialog read aloud by a narrator. There are some animated sequences, and
the illustrations are excellent. I’m partial to the original story, so
it was a nice bit of nostalgia to include in the DVD.

“Taming the Stallions” features the beautiful wild horses trained
by handlers especially for the film.

Video, Audio and Interface

Even the best home theatre system cannot compete with the IMAX picture
in its original format on the large screen, but the transfer to DVD is
excellent. The picture is very crisp. However, the fact that the film
makers had to loop every piece of dialog in a studio is evident. Or maybe
it was evident after I watched the “A Story in IMAX” featurette;
I’m not sure. However, all I can think about now, watching the movie,
is that all the actors were standing around in a studio trying to match
up their lines with their mouths months later. Pretty distracting, to
say the least.

© Disney. All rights reserved.

The interface is easy to navigate and contains selections of scenes from
the movie. Since there are no commentaries and few extras, children will
have little problem working with the menu.

The Final Evaluation

It is obvious the producers, the director and everyone involved in the
making of the film wanted it to be a tribute to the original Black
Stallion film and to the authors Steven and Walter Farley. I feel
they sadly missed the mark by keeping the story so superficial. Perhaps
with an extra hour they could have developed the film into something more
memorable, but it’s hard to say. If your children are horse-crazy, this
DVD is worth a rental to investigate before buying. Otherwise, buy the
original Black Stallion and enjoy it as a family.