The Young Black Stallion

Disney’s first dramatic adventure made expressly for the giant IMAX screen is a rubber-legged, sleep-inducing prequel to 1979’s gorgeously photographed The Black Stallion. The story begins in Northern Africa at the end of World War II. A young girl named Neera flees her caravan when rogue soldiers approach. On her desert trek home, she crosses paths with an orphaned horse she refers to as “boy” even though it has the body of a mare. She bonds with the horse by hand-feeding it water from a spring, and together they walk and walk and walk and sleep next to a campfire and then walk and walk (yawn) and walk some more until they arrive at a home she shares with her grandfather. Neera then enters her steed in an annual race to help restore her grandfather’s somehow tainted reputation. The movie was directed by Simon Wincer (Free Willy).