“Spirit Untamed” effectively rehashes the pilot episode of the “Spirit Riding Free” series, which covered its bargain-price tracks with textures that appeared almost painterly by comparison, like something out of a picture book. The result looks disappointing, to say the least, barely better than the low-budget likes of “Hoodwinked” some 15 years ago. This latest feature appears to have been outsourced, with DreamWorks overseeing the development and animation handled by Jellyfish Pictures at a fraction of the cost. It’s possible that we have already witnessed the peak of DreamWorks’ CG potential, back before the sale to Universal, when Jeffrey Katzenberg was still in charge. But “Spirit,” while not a masterpiece per se, will always stand as the apotheosis of what the studio could achieve the old-fashioned way … which makes this decades-later sequel something of a rude awakening. Within a few years, DreamWorks’ computer animation technology would be so sophisticated - and the “Shrek” series such a hit - as to render the traditional (manual) approach obsolete. “Spirit” projected an aesthetic and conceptual purity that DreamWorks has since abandoned, one-upping “The Lion King’s” spectacular “Circle of Life” prologue with digital tools that allowed the virtual camera to swoop and fly through the untamed West. The gorgeous movie was an unconventional toon in many ways: a talking-animal movie in which the titular horse (voiced by Matt Damon) spoke only to us, the audience, while communicating with others through snorts and movement. It’s been 19 years since the original “Spirit,” which was DreamWorks’ next-to-last hand-drawn feature.
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