Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002)

The hoarse wail of Bryan Adams fills the soundtrack, but the wild horse hero of Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron doesn't sing, or joke, or even talk (every so often, his thoughts are delivered by a plainspoken Matt Damon). That barely verbal quietude stands the movie in good stead. A solemn neo-Bambi that dares to enchant kids without comic relief, ''Spirit'' is an animated fairy tale made with simple, elegant conviction. It has its dawdling moments, yet in its very square way, it brings back some of the primal storybook innocence that has been squeezed out of the form in recent years by the attention-deficit vaudeville showiness of cartoons like ''Tarzan'' and ''The Prince of Egypt.''

The creators of ''Spirit'' have figured out how to give traditional ''2-D'' drawings the visual dynamism of CGI. The camera races through granite canyons, a locomotive does a crashing roll down a hill that beats anything in the last two ''Die Hard''s, and, in one spectacular moment, we get a God's-eye view of ''Spirit'' as he leaps from the dizzying top of a mesa.

None of this would matter, however, if the tale didn't draw us into its born-to-roam-free vitality. Captured by Union soldiers, Spirit, with the help of a friendly Lakota tribesman, fights to stay a beautiful unbroken beast, and there is hardly a child in the audience who won't relate to his quest.

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