moonspinner55 Review of The Black Stallion Returns

The Black Stallion Returns (1983)

Boys adventure story...prettily photographed but a sequel nobody asked for

[2/10 · 24 December 2016]

Follow-up to the acclaimed 1979 film concerns the same American lad in the 1940s who bonded with an Arabian stallion while shipwrecked on an island. Having won a championship race while riding the Black, the kid's horse is stolen by a sheik who claims the horse is actually his. Following the horse thieves, our hero stows away on a plane headed for Casablanca, where he learns the Black will be entered in a new competition. Although the horse is the same (except for the racing shots) and Kelly Reno returns in the lead, director Carol Ballard from the first film has been substituted with Robert Dalva--and one can almost immediately sense the first film's dreamy pace and caressing images have gone missing. Dalva sets up individual scenes with a ham-fisted directness that makes the whole enterprise seem perfunctory, and he has no talent whatsoever with actors. Since the story is a washout, there's nothing to occupy one's interest except for the technical accomplishments, including Carlo di Palma's fine (if somewhat inexpressive) cinematography and Georges Delerue's lovely score. As for the performances, Reno doesn't have a professional actor's polish (which is both pro and con), but Allen Goorwitz (Garfield), playing the sheik's competitor for the Black (an Arab named Kurr!), is hopelessly if amusingly miscast as the proverbial cackling-villain; Vincent Spano (as Moroccan an actor as money could buy) is equally out-of-place as Reno's desert friend, while Teri Garr returns in a walk-on as Reno's mother (it's even less of a cameo than she had the first time). Not terrible, certainly, but turgid: a journey which trots out the same old stereotypes capped with a formula finale. *1/2 from ****