film criticism by maryann johanson | celebrating 25 years: 1997–2022
In Secretariat, a true story of the fastest horse ever to win the Triple Crown, his owner (Diane Lane) takes huge business risks to promote and race the animal in a time — the 1970s — when women making multimillion-dollar deals was not the done thing. This flick sprang from (among other films)…
All over the country, little girls with equine fixations will be blinking their dreamy pony-filled eyes at their daddies and pleading please please please prettyplease can we see the horse movie? And oddly enough, *Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story* is the cinematic equivalent of the deployment of such adorable nascent feminine wiles: Please don’t shoot the horse with the broken leg, Daddy, Dakota Fanning with her enormous eyes brimming with tears and her quivering lip doesn’t exactly say, but she might as well have. Please nurse the horse back to health at tremendous personal expense and sacrifice so you can later give it to me as a prezzie and I can train her and we can enter the massively prestigious Breeder’s Cup race with her! Pul-eeeeeeze!
