Whisperer nothing to shout about

The Horse Whisperer

Here's a bright idea: make a movie about a couple of people whose only redeeming quality is that they're physically attractive. Sound like a good idea? Then don't miss the Horse Whisperer during its turn at the Apollo. For the rest of the movie-viewing population, avoid this thing like you would my grandfather after a night at the chili feed.

The movie pleasantly opens in snow-covered Connecticut. Most of the main characters are established in the first 30 seconds: a workaholic power-mom, clearly on the leading edge of women's lib who's still in the city instead of vacationing with her family (Kristin Scott Thomas); a caring, sensitive father (Sam Neil); and an adolescent girl independent enough to get up on a cold winter morning before her father in order to ride her horse while the day is still fresh (Scarlett Johansson). Seems mundane enough, until disaster strikes fast and hard. The girl gets into an accident with her horse and a logging truck and she loses a leg - heavy stuff for a thirteen year-old.

The movie is starting to show some promise after ten minutes as the whole family struggles to cope with the tragedy that's befallen the girl who seems, at first appearance, to be our heroine. The joke's on the audience. Instead the viewer is taken on a rather long and arduous ride out to Montana to visit with this mystical horse guy (Robert Redford) who's going to get the scarred horse and girl back into riding mode, and get the girl to stop blaming her problems on her parents.

But the problem here is that the movie isn't about any of that. It's about the mother who falls pathetically for Robert Redford and edges closer and closer to cheating on her husband, who, frankly, has done no wrong. There's nothing in what the audience sees of the mother to make us give a damn about her problems or sympathize with her cheating on her husband.

"Wait a second," the reader's thinking. "This sounds like a chick-flick (Or the more PC, movie for women). There's some horses, there's an-aging-but-still-blonde Robert Redford. The reviewer's male, of course he doesn't like it." Not at all. Nothing wrong with a good chick-flick. "Thelma and Louise" and "Boys On The Side" were great movies, because they had some meat to them. Some recurring violence, a closet homosexual whose friends don't know how to deal, pregnancy out of wedlock, AIDS. These are issues that any viewer can find interesting.

The Horse Whisperer had nothing! The only point of interest for anyone without ovaries - the thirteen-year-old girl dealing with missing a leg - took a back seat, way in the back. To what? To Robert Redford's attempt to make himself out as an irresistible beau-hunk that drives women to leave their husbands and high-power jobs in favor of what they really want: a horse-back ride through Montana.