It's not often you see a depiction of New York as being so snobby that its representatives are dressed like they just left the court of the French King Louis XIV. If there's a true antagonist in the film, it's the ridiculous pair of New York dandies who try to weasel their way into remaining victorious with their horses. A climactic dual horse race at the end of the film, meant to prove that Figure really is a hell of a steed, is a rare bit of action and humor, though the latter is unintentional. Justin Morgan Had a Horse is so blandly dramatic that it barely has a pulse. For Mousterpiece Cinema, the podcast I used to host, I watched a lot of the films Disney made in the 1960s and 1970s while I wasn't a fan of many of them and their elongated stretches of slapstick humor, there were at least attempts at being lively and humorous throughout. I can't speak to how faithful the film is to the novel, but the adaptation is a fairly sober-minded (sometimes too sober-minded) affair about how a lower-class schoolteacher, constantly beset upon by a grouchy Squire who essentially runs their Vermont town, really wants his little horse to become a horse daddy to lots of other horses.ĭoes this all sound pretty weird to you? Because Justin Morgan Had a Horse is a very weird film to watch. The only obvious appeal to the whole family would be the horses themselves, and there's no comic business to speak of when they're onscreen.
It's also worth noting that, unlike a number of Disney live-action films of the era, there aren't any children in this film, and really few elements of comic relief that would appeal to kids.
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