MEDIOCREMOVIE.CLUB
  • Reviews
  • Side Pieces
  • Shane of Thrones
  • Podcast
  • About
  • Archives
  • Game of Thrones Fantasy

Dream Horse

5/11/2022

0 Comments

 

B+
​3.33

Welsh townspeople pool their money to buy and raise a competitive racehorse.

Directed by Euros Lyn
Starring Toni Collette, Damien Lewis, and Owen Teale
​Review by Jon Kissel

Picture
An old-fashioned underdog story, Dream Horse loses nothing just because it’s familiar.  Sports movies like this one can only go in a few different ways, and Euros Lyn’s 2021 adaptation of a 2016 documentary about an early 21st century horse follows a predictable, if accurate, three-act structure of success followed by failure followed by success.  Dream Horse gets over on the many other films like it with effective casting of character actors, an emphasis on the omnipresent class angle in its Welsh setting, and a predictably strong lead performance from Toni Collette.  Lyn puts it all together in a warm and charming package that’s easy to love and impossible to hate.  ​

Collette stars as Jan Vokes, a worker in a small-town grocery store.  The film takes its time with Jan’s life and daily routine, introducing her as a lover of animals but without much in her life.  Her marriage to Brian (Owen Teale) is comfortable but unsurprising, her children have moved on, and it’s easy to imagine what the last decades of her life are going to be like: exactly the same.  Her dignified and boring existence is kickstarted by an idea to take up horse breeding.  She rallies her neighbors, who are in much the same position as she is, to chip in a regular fee for the upkeep of the animal, and the community unites around a foal they name Dream Alliance.  The horse does surprisingly well, and what was a lark for the regulars becomes a serious endeavor, reinvigorating Jan and the town at large.

​
The root appeal of this story, whether it’s a feature or a documentary, is the fact that a bunch of pensioners and service workers pooled their money together and brought their horse to compete and win against the ancient Welsh gentry.  It’s the triumph of community over cash and privilege, however fleeting and insignificant the battle.  Lyn isn’t making an eat-the-rich screed, but that dynamic is impossible to ignore when Brian’s toothless grin gets anywhere near a fancy horse-racing crowd.  It’s there in horse movies in general because no film can resist giving some animating spirit to the horse itself.  Is this an investment vehicle that needs to produce results, or is it a living thing with its own will and its own dignity?  Dream Horse is far too romantic to land at any conclusion other than the latter.  

As the film so values Dream Alliance and the syndicate of townspeople that supports him, Dream Horse often becomes a watch-through-your-fingers trial of unbearable tension.  This style of horse racing requires jumps, and Lyn does an exceptional job of foregrounding the chance of injury and making it into an inevitability.  His camera finds the horses as their bodies leave the ground, as they crash through the shrub obstacle, and as they land back on the ground.  Every step of that process, repeated several times during a single race, is accompanied by an intake of breath, waiting for the moment when something goes wrong.  Lyn gums up his film with false and contrived attempts to build tension, like in scenes where Jan is left to wonder if anyone’s going to show up to her initial meeting when they obviously are or there’s no movie.  These instances are made all the more useless by the film’s ability to generate a huge amount of stress in the races themselves, none of which would be possible if the film was unable to create a rooting interest in the town and the horse itself.  

Toni Collette has been working for decades and she always elevates her material.  One of the more underrated modern actors, Collette adds a lot of nuance to Jan.  There’s a beaten-down quality to her that shows up whenever she keeps herself from cheering too loudly for Dream Alliance, but her passion for him always overcomes it and it’s always cathartic to see it happen.  She’s got a British quality of composure, but it doesn’t come naturally to her.  Collette shows all this, and Lyn knows when he should just leave the camera on her face instead of on the race that she’s watching.  She blows away her costar Damien Lewis, playing a syndicate member who connects Jan with horse people and who’s having his own personal crisis of confidence.  The film doesn’t have as firm a grasp on his character, and he’s more a source of frustration.  Fleshing out the syndicate are longtime theater queens like Sian Phillips and character actors like Karl Johnson, whose gate might be open but whose beast is asleep.  Dream Horse does a great job in making its cast feel like a community, no doubt in part through all the singing they do on bus rides to and from horse races.  This is all so naturalistic that I wouldn’t be surprised if the cast broke into song on their own to pass the time and Lyn decided to put it in the movie.  

Dream Horse has its crutches but Collette is too affecting and the cast is too charming to detract much from it.  This is a crowd-pleaser that I’d recommend to anyone, a lovable romp that’s earnest in its intentions to do right by an uplifting story of solidarity amongst humans and across species.  B+
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Authors

    JUST SOME IDIOTS GIVING SURPRISINGLY AVERAGE MOVIE REVIEWS.

    Categories

    All
    2017 Catch Up Trio
    80s
    Action
    Adventure
    AI Trio
    Author - Blair
    Author - Bobby
    Author - Bryan
    Author - Chris
    Author - Cook
    Author - Drew
    Author - Joe
    Author - Jon
    Author - JR
    Author - Lane
    Author - Phil
    Author - Pierce
    Author - Sean
    Author - Shane
    Author - Tom
    Best Of 2016
    Best Of 2017
    Best Of 2018
    Best Of 2019
    Best Of 2020
    Best Of 2021
    Best Of 2022
    Comedy
    Culture Clash Trio
    Denzel Trio
    Documentary
    Drama
    Foreign
    Historical
    Horror
    Internet Docs Trio
    Mediocrities
    Movie Trios
    Musical
    Podcast
    Romance
    Round 3.1
    Round 3.2
    Round 3.3
    Round 4.1
    Round 4.2
    Round 4.3
    Sci Fi
    Season 10
    Season 2
    Season 3
    Season 4
    Season 5
    Season 6
    Season 7
    Season 8
    Season 9
    Shorts
    Sports
    Thriller
    Western
    Women In Men's Worlds

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014

    Click to set custom HTML