Lucky Prescott’s life is changed forever when she moves from her home in the city to a small frontier town and befriends a wild mustang named Spirit.
Lucky Prescott (Isabela Merced) has no idea how much her life is going to change when years after the death of her mother, she is forced to leave the big East Coast town she has been raised in and expected to start a new life with her dad James (Jake Gyllenhaal). Her Aunt Cora (Julianne Moore) assures her everything is going to be fine but she isn’t convinced that she will make friends and be able to adjust to life in the small town with her dad. Lucky’s fascination with horses has been stifled by her dad due to the catastrophic fear he has of losing yet another loved one to a horse-involved incident.
When Lucky arrives in the town of Miradero, she is greeted by a few of the town’s outgoing kids, but she is even more impressed by the introduction to a wild Mustang that doesn’t quite go along with the idea of a partnership. With each new day that she tries to cope with the smalltown idiosyncrasies, the more she gets intrigued by the mustang and less intrigued by her father’s apprehension to the whole idea of a horse being a part of their lives. While Lucky’s circle of friends seems to be getting wider, so is her determination to get closer to the horse and to convince her dad that he has to let go of the past and trust her to follow the instinct with horses which she feels is her destiny as well as a part of her late mother’s wishes.
After spending every single day at the stables trying to earn Spirit’s trust, Lucky also finds out that an overzealous wrangler is trying to find an opportunity to steal Spirit and use him for his own purposes. With this knowledge, Lucky and her friends embark upon a wild, wild, west type of adventure in order to save Spirit and reunite him with his family. In the end, Lucky earns Spirit’s trust as well as her dad’s, and is satisfied with the fact that she will have to give Spirit up, but only to his family and not to the wrangler who didn’t have his best interest in mind.
Director Elaine Bogan does an excellent job displaying the youthfulness of the characters, as well as with the building of relationships throughout the entire film. While girl power was a definite theme throughout the film, so was the element of loyalty and the redeeming value of rebuilding a family and allowing time and determination for Lucky to discover who she really was and to live her own truth in spite of the obstacles. Once again, Dreamworks Animation has revived an old story and given it new life with massive appeal to all horse lovers and to those needing an updated adaptation and the courage to live their own truth.
In Theaters Friday, June 4th
