So much wrong with this movie. The director obviously did no research on horses, training, jumping competitions etc. The scenes were terrible. There were supposed to be a couple humorous scenes, usually revolving around the black trainer. One scene, was supposed to show the humor of the fact that he talks incessantly and while talking with john schneiders character, he is talking and then looks to schneider only to see that he has gone and he was talking to himself. well, we have seen this one a lot of times, except in this one it was a far shot and you only get a fraction of a second where he turns towards where john used to be and he isn't there, but its just a fraction and you barely register that he is alone talking to himself. how can you screw up such a simple obvious joke? the directing and editing of this movie was appalling.
Now, one of the main problems i have with this movie is one of its messages. throughout the movie, the supposed wonderful young angelic girl is still dealing with her mothers death and her father has a girl friend. basically right up to the end this "angel" treats the girl friend like crap. Now, the only point in which she starts to accept her is at the very end when she finds out that the girlfriend actually paid for john to keep the horse because he was going to get rid of it, and also that she bought all of these groceries for this kid who just wandered into the movie sometime in the middle and she became friends with him, and btw, they said nothing about him being poor, but apparently the girlfriend had to buy his family all this food, and because of that, this unpleasant girl finally decides to give her a break, in about the last minute of the movie.
The reason that irks me is that apparently you only accept somneone if they pour money into things that you approve of. The father should have sat her down and stopped coddling her. because apparently its fine for her to treat the girlfriend like crap until the girlfriend throws money and does all these things. well in real life our girl or boyfriend may not be a retired investment banker with too much money, and you may have to learn to accept a new person in your father or mothers life. I am still bothered by how ugly she was to the girlfriend, and everyone had to coddle the "angel".
Now john schneiders daughter was even more terrible than the little girl and once again its all forgiven in the last lame minutes of the movie. i could go on about the mother, who seems to be a money grubbing tight expensive clothes and too much makeup wearing shrill, and the fact that the divorce was supposedly all johns fault, even though the mother was portrayed as shallow, vain and a money waster, yet he had to do this lame dialogue about it being all his fault.
The scenes were so contrived, the dialogue lacking, the connections between scenes were disjointed, and the messages terrible.
it left me with a bad taste, and i just felt sorry for schneider for having been in this film.