War Horse - Tow Jockey Five Second Review

There is a retro feel to War Horse. The bonding of a boy and an animal, the human like intelligence displayed by the creature, and how it can feel and express emotions are all straight out of a 1960's Disney movie. The saturated colors and almost too perfect sets and settings bring to mind the great  technicolor epics of the 30's and 40's. This story follows the adventures of a horse named Joey as it experiences The Great War in Europe and provides a link between the several vignettes featuring the people that are in possession of the horse at any particular time. The brief windows into various people's lives and how the war is affecting them are the best part of the movie. I found the parts more focused on the horse to be a bit hoakey. This is a pleasant movie to watch. I can overlook certain points with great quantities of obvious CGI. I can overlook things that fly in the face of logic like having an army camp without sentries or scouts and whose only defense is a straight line of machine guns positioned to fire into the camp.  I can even forgive the last 10 minutes of the film which should have ended with the reuniting of the boy and the horse but didn't.  What I cannot overlook is that this movie was nominated for "Best Picture". It's a decent film, no question,but Best Picture? No way.

Now showing on Showtime and Showtime On-demand