Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story (review)
Her Little Pony
All over the country, little girls with equine fixations will be blinking their dreamy pony-
Dakota’s Daddy, after all, is Kurt Russell (Sky High, Dark Blue), who did pretty much the same thing recently with the American Olympic ice hockey team, so he should be able to pull off a horsey miracle, right? Let’s call it a mare-
But somehow I suspect a lot of the other aspects of Dreamer were invented, like how right in the beginning of the movie poor little Dakota (War of the Worlds, Hide and Seek) is refused admission to the owners’ area of the racetrack, kept out by a velvet rope, because her Daddy is only a trainer, while mean evil David Morse (the guy her Daddy works for) looks on in disdain. And you just know that before the movie is over, she will be behind that velvet rope and David Morse (Hearts in Atlantis, Proof of Life) will just have to lump it. Or like how Soñador just happens to mean “dreamer” in Spanish. If they’d made the movie about Mariah’s Storm, they’d’ve had to call it Storm Front or something like that, and everyone would think that was the sequel to Twister and not a reliably predictable triumph-
Look, if you haven’t seen a lot of the other 18,943,321 iterations of this exact same story, you’re sure to enjoy it perfectly fine, and even if you have seen 9 million other movies just like Dreamer, you might enjoy it anyway, because Dakota Fanning really is a remarkable young actor. I can’t think of another young girl who can command the screen the way she can, unless maybe you go way back to Shirley Temple, but Fanning’s is a much more mature talent: there’s nothing of Temple’s dressed-
Perhaps, then, the most reliably predictable thing about Dreamer is that, with this cast, you can count on being in for a good time even though you know how it’ll end before it even begins. You could do a lot worse at the movies these days than that.
When you purchase or rent almost anything from Amazon US, Amazon Canada, Amazon UK, and iTunes (globally), you help support my work at Flick Filosopher. Please use my links when you’re shopping at either service. Thank you!
watch at home
based on fact | coming of age | drama | family/kids | girls/women | reviews | sports | teen