Butler's Cinema Scene

“DREAM HORSE” My rating: B-

113 minutes | MPAA rating: PG

The unlikely story of the prize-winning race horse Dream Alliance — bred and raised communally by the residents of a Welsh village — has already been the subject of the sublime 2016 documentary “Dark Horse.”

The new fictionalized version of his life, “Dream Horse,” isn’t nearly as good as the doc; still, it’s a solid example of feel-good cinema.

Dream Alliance was owned by a “syndicate” of two dozen store clerks, CPAs, retirees and other common folk in the tiny mining community of Cefn Fforest. Each chipped in 10 pounds a month for the animal’s care and training, and in 2009 the horse overcame what should have been a life-ending injury to win the Welsh National.

It’s like the very definition of feel-good.

The omnipresent Toni Collette stars as Jan Vokes, who toils as a grocery clerk during the day and a bar maid at night. While pushing pints one evening she overhears a barstool conversation featuring Howard Davies (Damien Lewis), an accountant who once was part of a consortium that owned a race horse.

Long an animal lover, Jan wonders what it would take to own her own race horse. She sucks the equally horse-crazed Howard into her scheme; his number crunching suggests that if enough locals chip in a few pounds every month they can afford to buy a mare, cover the fees to have her bred with a horse of quality, and raise their offspring in Jan’s back yard.

It’s the equine version of hey-kids-let’s-put-on-a-show.

What nobody expects is that after being farmed out to a professional trainer (Nicholas Farrell) their pony will actually start winning, much to the amazement of racing-world pundits who maintain the sport is only for London millionaires in Saville Road suits, certainly not for local yokels in worn tweed and muddy Wellingtons.

Apparently the real Dream Alliance had a remarkably copacetic personality. Alas, we don’t get to see much of it here. Shortly after his first birthday he leaves Jan’s cozy barn for formal training, and thereafter we only see him in the race sequences. So while we’re treated to a few lovely moments of the young colt frolicking, before too long the horse is mostly MIA, leaving the filmmakers to concentrate on his human owners.

Actually, they concentrate almost exclusively on Jan and Howard. The other members of the syndicate — a local drunk (Karl Johnson), an aged pensioner (Sian Phillips), a professorial pedant (Anthony O’Donnell), even Jan’s burly, toothless husband Bian (Owen Teale) — are drawn with broad strokes. You know…village types. Most are given one dominant personality trait, and that’s about the depth of it.

We get a bit more back story about Jan, and we learn that Howard has been keeping his involvement in the syndicate a secret from his disapproving wife. Still, this is pretty thin stuff…good thing Collette and Lewis are the kind of performers who can quietly expand to fill just about any role.

There are arguments over what direction Dream Alliance’s career should take — Jan places the animal’s well-being above all other considerations while other owners are hoping to show a profit — and late in the film, when the horse suffers a devastating injury in a race, his owners have to decide whether to euthanize him or go with a radical (and expensive) new treatment.

There’s also a big dose of British class consciousness at work here…common folk are not particularly welcomed within the elite ranks of thoroughbred racing, and some of our working-class heroes relish poking pins in the pretensions of the traditional horse crowd.

So. Not earth shaking, but pleasant enough.

| Robert W. Butler