The Young Black Stallion (2003)

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Today’s film is an interesting one. It barely suffices the “feature-length” requirement of my blog, clocking in at only 50 minutes. And it barely suffices the “theatrically-released or Disney+-released” requirement of my blog, having been theatrically-released, but only to IMAX cinemas. Nevertheless, it qualifies, so there.

Directed by Simon Wencer, The Young Black Stallion (or Young Black Stallion) serves as a prequel to the non-Disney film, The Black Stallion, which was based on the novel of the same name by Walter Farley.

How does it fare? Read on to find out!

And remember, SPOILERS AHEAD!

The film takes place in North Africa in 1946 when a young black colt is separated from his mother in the desert. A young girl named Neera, played by Biana G. Tamimi, gets lost in the desert, but manages to bump into the horse who keeps her company and helps guide her back to her grandfather’s house.

The horse runs off into the desert while Neera reunites with her grandfather, Ben Ishak, played by Richard Romanus, and her cousin, Aden, played by Patrick Elyas. Her grandfather used to breed racehorses, but has had to sell them due to his fields being ruined by desert robbers.

Neera tells her grandfather about the horse, but he believes that it was just a figment of her imagination or a trick by the devil in the desert. Whatever the case may be, the horse doesn’t return for a long time.

Eventually, it reappears in the desert to Neera. She decides to learn to ride it to compete in the local horse races so that her grandfather can use the prize money to get back into the horse breeding game again. Her grandfather is against her riding the horse (whom they call Shetan, the Arabic word for “devil”) because it’s dangerous and because girls don’t race horses.

Nevertheless, she trains in secret with Aden assisting her. Soon enough, it’s time for the horse races and Neera enters the competition with her face covered so that nobody can recognize it’s her. After the race begins, Neera rides with all her might.

It’s not long before her grandfather and the others realize that it’s Neera who is racing. Fortunately enough, Ben Ishak isn’t upset with her and instead cheers her on. Neera ends up winning and Shetan is also reunited with his mother (who turns out to have been one of Ben Ishak’s horses before he had to sell them).

And that was The Young Black Stallion! You can tell that this film wasn’t meant for the general public, but was instead meant for a specific purpose: in this case, being an IMAX presentation. The horse racing and sweeping landscapes were clearly intended to be viewed on a big IMAX screen rather than anything else!

As a result of that, the film itself is not heavily plot-based and even a bit boring. You know how I am with these “watching animals do things” Disney movies and even though this one features horses, it’s still essentially the same thing.

The acting also was very amateur-ish, but you can tell the kids were trying. Maybe Richard Romanus was okay, but that’s not saying much.

This movie also features one of my pet peeves which is Arabic names being mispronounced. (As a Muslim, Arabic is a language I have a strong connection to, affection for, and familiarity with.) Even though the main cast is all of Arab descent, their pronunciations (especially of each other’s names) are very Americanized. I’m not sure if this is due to them not speaking Arabic themselves fluently or as a main language or if it’s due to the filmmakers intentionally wanting the Arabic mispronounced to be more palatable to Western audiences’ perceptions of how Arabic is supposed to sound. Whatever the case may be, this bothered me a lot.

All in all, I didn’t enjoy this film and I don’t know if I would say it’s even worth checking out on an IMAX screen. I guess if you enjoy watching horses run, you’ll enjoy the film. But it’s not for me.

So, my final score for this film is 16/35 = 45.71% (F) !

The next review will be posted on December 24, 2024.