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Actress races away with heart-tugging horse tale 'Dreamer'
Young star Dakota Fanning teams with movie veterans to create family entertainment of the best variety.
Dakota Fanning tends to the horse she helps nurse back to health in "Dreamer."See it, rate it
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Absolutely solid family entertainment, "Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story" is corn-fed, wholesome and thoroughly satisfying. It's the heart of a film from the '30s dressed in the look of modern production values, slick and sleek as a racehorse with the spirit of a champion.
Understand, this is the same movie you've seen many times before -- a child believes in the innate strength and goodness of an animal, and then that animal transcends all expectations. The difference here can be summed up easily: This movie stars Dakota Fanning. And Fanning, the best child star in generations, brings a sense of reality to a movie screen that is undeniable.
Having worked alongside Tom Cruise ("War of the Worlds"), Robert De Niro ("Hide and Seek") and Denzel Washington ("Man on Fire") and more than held her own (she was arguably the best thing in all three of those films), and holding a box-office success record that tops Julia Roberts and Cameron Diaz over the past few years, Fanning, at age 11, may be the most precocious child actor in memory. What's particularly notable about "Dreamer" is that it's one of the few actual family films she's done.
Working alongside her is, perhaps-not-coincidentally, former child actor Kurt Russell. Russell stars as Ben Crane, a race horse trainer whose family ranch is disheveled and who's down on his luck. His faithful wife Lily (Elisabeth Shue) is supportive, but his grumpy father (Kris Kristofferson) offers him nothing but grief.
And then there's his daughter, Cale (Fanning), whose love of horses, and sense of them, rivals his own. When a horse Ben has been training takes a fall, Cale begs her father not to have it put down. And so he, short on funds and future, goes about trying to rehabilitate the horse and hoping that it will at least be good for breeding.
Obviously you can see where all this is going. It's a story of perseverance and redemption, of the idealism of youth conquering the cynicism of age. But first-time director John Gatins (he wrote "Coach Carter") approaches his material with such respect and enthusiasm that the enterprise ends up feeling more classic than clichéd.
It helps that he has such pros in the cast. Russell, Shue and Kristofferson all seem to buy into the movie wholeheartedly, and the supporting cast is pitch perfect, including Luis Guzman, David Morse, Ken Howard, Freddy Rodriguez and Oded Fehr.
Still, the reason it all works remains Fanning. She may be the biggest movie star of the next 40 years, she may be over by age 13, but for now she has the ability to live and breathe completely naturally on screen. You thoroughly believe her as an imp, as a confident little girl, as a heartbroken kid, as that very person she's playing. There's a truth to her that's uncanny.
"Dreamer" is old-fashioned, emotional, big-finish fun, a movie for the entire family done so well you never resent its familiarities. You just admire its race to the end.
Why don't they make movies like this anymore? Apparently they do.
You can reach Tom Long at tlong@detnews.com. And join him for Reel Talk, a movie preview and discussion, monthly at the Star Southfield Theatre. To register, call (313) 222-1457 or (313) 222-1458, or go online at www.detnews.com/entertainment.
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The Detroit News.
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