Spirit Untamed (2021)    DreamWorks/Western-Adventure    RT: 88 minutes    Rated PG (some adventure action and animal cruelty)    Director: Elaine Bogan    Screenplay: Aury Wallington and Kristin Hahn    Music: Amie Doherty    Cinematography: Robert Edward Crawford    Release date: June 4, 2021 (US)    Cast: Isabela Merced, Jake Gyllenhaal, Marsai Martin, Mckenna Grace, Julianne Moore, Andre Braugher, Walton Goggins, Eiza Gonzalez, Lucian Perez, Joe Hart.    Box Office: $17.7M (US)/$42.7M (World)

Rating: ***

DEFINITION: Niche film [noun, neesh film]- a film made for a smaller segment of a larger audience.

 I’ll use the computer-animated western-adventure Spirit Untamed to illustrate the concept. It’s a movie for children (larger audience), but it’s aimed specifically at young girls obsessed with horses (the smaller segment or niche). Growing up, it seemed like nearly every girl I knew in elementary school had a thing for horses. That was in the 70s when the Michael Martin Murphey song “Wildfire” became a big hit. I’m sure it consistently brought my horse-loving classmates to tears. A movie like Spirit Untamed would have gone over big with them. Their parents, it’s hard to say. It’s harmless, but hardly substantial. My wife and I liked it. Most other adults would probably be bored by it.

 Spirit Untamed is a sequel/spin-off to 2002’s Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron and the Netflix series Spirit Riding Free. I haven’t seen the movie since it first came out two decades ago. I didn’t even know there was a TV series. All I had to go on when I sat to watch the latest Spirit movie was the trailer and TV ads. It looked like a pleasant little diversion and it is. The story centers on Lucky Prescott (Merced, Dora and the Lost City of Gold), a spirited tween girl taken by her Aunt Cora (Moore, Still Alice) to spend the summer with her father Jim (Gyllenhaal, Donnie Darko) in the small frontier town where she was born. Lucky was an infant when her mother was killed while performing a stunt on horseback. She hasn’t seen her father since. Growing up in a city, she’s not impressed with Miradero at first. That changes when she starts making friends.

 Lucky’s already strained relationship with Dad is made worse when he forbids her to go near any horses, especially Spirit, a wild mustang captured by a gang of despicable wranglers led by Hendricks (Goggins, The Hateful Eight), a goateed slimeball determined to break the spirited stallion. Of course, she wastes no time in defying the father she barely knows. With some help from her two new friends, Pru (Martin, Black-ish) and Abigail (Grace, Troop Zero), she connects with Spirit, understandably distrustful of humans. She helps him escape the corral and reunite with his herd. Their happiness is cut short when Hendricks and his gang suddenly appear out of the darkness. They capture Spirit’s equine family and load them on a train for the purposes of selling them into hard labor. Lucky and her human besties team up to stop the bad guys. To do this, they will have to take a shortcut over Heck Mountain (it’s PG, what do you expect?).

 I don’t have anything bad to say about Spirit Untamed, but I can only praise it lightly. It’s a good movie; its target audience will be sufficiently pleased. It’s completely free of irony and cynicism. It’s doesn’t resort to rude humor and bad behavior like a certain kids movie starring a bad bunny. The voice talents do a fine job, especially the three young leads. The animation is nicely done. The scenes of wide-open spaces and contoured canyons are pretty to look at. There’s a good amount of action with the girls chasing a train on horseback and a wild ride into a canyon. There are a few mildly scary moments involving the bad guys mistreating the horses and intimidating our young heroines, but everything turns out okay in the end. It has a few funny scenes, mostly involving Abigail’s industrious little brother. Of course, there’s the whole father-daughter reconnecting story arc. Like everything else in Spirit Untamed, a positive outcome is a given. Movies like this tend to be predictable…. for adults, that is. That’s not the case with the target audience. They’ll be delighted.

 I don’t know what else I can say about Spirit Untamed. It’s agreeable entertainment. Girls will appreciate it more than boys. In fact, little guys will likely choose to skip it altogether, choosing instead to stay home and rewatch Cars for the umpteen-hundredth time. I honestly didn’t mind it. Sure, it’s nowhere near the level of classic animated Disney movies. It’s not likely to be regarded as a classic at any point. It’s nothing more than diverting entertainment for little girls who love horses. Be sure to play “Wildfire” for them on the ride home.