War Horse (2011)

I think my feelings on Spielberg have reached the point of full-out dislike. In the last 10 years, he's only made a single film that I've enjoyed: "Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull." And I'm not going to say that was necessarily a "good" movie since, make no mistake, it was hands down the weakest of the series, but it wasn't bad. I enjoyed it. But even though I liked it, almost nobody else did. Can't say that I'm not a rebel.

In fact, you could move that time table back another 5 to make it 15 years and it would only add one more film to the list: "Saving Private Ryan." Only a pair of decent films in a decade and a half is not a good track record. Anyway, the whole point I'm trying to make here is that it used to be that Spielberg coming out with a new movie used to be cause to get pumped. Now I just roll my eyes and groan because I know that eventually I'm going to have to force myself to sit down and be bored for 2 and a half hours. But I have to watch, right? It's Spielberg.

"Thank you. We enjoy Spielberg."

"War Horse" just irritated me. I think I could just leave it at that. It was irritating. And the biggest reason I found for the irritation was the fact that it was about a character that I felt nothing about. The horse is supposed to lead us through this journey which connects people across countries and war, but it just comes off as exceedingly forced, because nothing in the story comes across as natural. Now, some of this may be because of the fact that the acting in this movie is unbearably awful from all the humans involved, but another aspect is that IT'S A HORSE! Why is everyone totally enraptured with it?

What I never understood about the horse was that every single person who gazed upon it was immediately and inescapably entranced by it. People went slack-jawed every time they met him, staring blankly as they slowly reached up and stroked its mane like it was some siren or telepathic super-being. And it's to the point where they are willing to put their livelihoods and in some cases even their lives in danger, just so they can have the horse. And I never had any idea why, but I finally reached a conclusion. I know what the horse's deal is:

It's an X-Man. Or X-Horse I guess. My theory is that it's like Professor X and can control minds for its own diabolical reasons.

He gets this look every single time he sees that horse, despite having owned him for years. Dude, just have sex with it already. It's so obvious you want to. Just bite down and do it.

It's amazing the things people will do in this movie, just for a freaking horse. I know that plenty people have a thing for horses, but it really gets ridiculous. They spend their life savings to buy him when they didn't even need him (TWO people do this, actually). They rush into a firefight to save him. They disobey direct orders from their commanders, possibly risking prison or execution because they can't stand the thought of the horse not making it. Not only that, but people who are constantly SURROUNDED by horses look at this horse like it is Zeus come down from Mount Olympus and wearing a saddle while John Williams swells his hackneyed score over top of the proceedings.

And every single person who ends up in the possession of this horse, and there's a few, seem to have a clinical need to say "You can't!" after every single freaking occasion where any prudent person does something NOT in accordance with the horse's best interests. It gets really, really old and just winds up sounding really whiny. And in the end, it really does end up sounding like they're brainwashed. But at the same time, it does make it pretty funny to watch from the perspective of them being controlled by a telepathic Mr. Ed.

And I just had to keep coming back to the same question: Why?

IT'S. A. HORSE.

Oh right. It's touching. Whatever.

There was only a single scene in the entire film which worked for me. It involved a British soldier going out into Dead Man's Land to free the horse after it got tangled up in barbed wire. In doing so, he is almost certainly at a 90% chance of being shot. (::eye roll:: "WHY?") After by complete luck nobody shoots him, a German solider comes out of the trench to help him cut the horse free. It's a good, touching scene about two people separated by war who might otherwise have been friends. And the only reason this scene works is because the conversation doesn't revolve around them fawning over the damn horse, like every other conversation in the movie does. The conversation is about "How are we going to work together to accomplish this?"

That is, until they cut him loose, the horse stands up, they fawn over its majesty and start arguing over who should get it. Great. I guess the horse's mind control doesn't work when the horse is lying down.

So basically the story ends up being about a magical horse. The horse is magical. Everyone loves it, and it touches the lives of everyone it meets. And it doesn't matter that it takes place during WWI, when millions of people are dying all around. At least the horse is OK. What a crock of cheesy crap. And I'll say the same thing about "War Horse" that I said about "Hugo" and "Tintin":

If they hadn't been directed by really famous directors, these would have been laughed off the screen and forgotten in a week. Hey Spielberg, make a good movie again or just shut the hell up.

If I want magic horses, I'll watch this, thank you very much.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "War Horse" was dumb, cheesy and waaaaay too long. Spielberg has now officially made my "Who Cares" list. Skip it.