Critic Reviews
| 50 |
TV Guide
Bodrov's staging and cutting does a perfectly good job conveying their anthropomorphized feelings and motives; the spoken drivel is just a distraction. The film's human characters are largely inconsequential.
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| 50 |
Mr. Showbiz
There's no spirit of adventure to separate this one from the pack.
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| 50 |
USA Today
It's just too soon after those silly talking dinosaurs to put up with any movie about a talking horse.
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| 50 |
Chicago Tribune
Monica Eng
It's probably best to leave talking animal stories in the care of comedic filmmakers.
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| 50 |
San Francisco Chronicle
It is aimed primarily at children, and its affectionate treatment of animals is certain to please most of them.
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| 40 |
Los Angeles Times
A stunner marred by its central figure, a colt named Lucky, having been voiced (by Lukas Haas). Piovani's score is lyrical and emotionally charged, and it goes a long way toward negating the effects of the voice-over narration we're asked to accept.
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| 38 |
Chicago Sun-Times
I seem to be developing a rule about talking animals: They can talk if they're cartoons or Muppets, but not if they're real.
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| 38 |
New York Post
Suffers from terminal hoof-in-mouth disease.
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| 30 |
Chicago Reader
The majesty of the landscape and the sweetness of a plot strand about the horse learning survival skills from a 12-year-old girl might have been more intriguing without the cloying voice-over.
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| 20 |
Dallas Observer
Awful narration almost ruins the ghostly, gorgeous Running Free.
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| 20 |
The New York Times
Vacillates between cutesy Disney-style anthropomorphism and "Born Free" exoticism.
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| 10 |
Film.com
If you're looking for something child-appropriate that'll actually keep the little darlings awake for two hours straight, you'd do better...and cheaper...to just stay at home with the Discovery Channel.
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| 10 |
LA Weekly
Let horses be horses, scrap the tin-eared Lukas Haas narration.
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| 10 |
Variety
Robert Hofler
A profoundly disappointing attempt to reinvigorate the animal movie genre with the classic ingredients of physical poetry and mythical storytelling.
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| 0 |
Entertainment Weekly
This may be the first talking-animal movie in which the critter hero seems to have been body-snatched by a commentator from C-SPAN.
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