Some may find this a little over the top and clichéd, but I revel in extremes and it was a treat for me for a film like Spirit to be released only a few years after my other all-time favourite animation, Tarzan. Everytime I watch Spirit I can’t help but notice how much it resembles Tarzan in places, and, if you believe the stories, it’s easy to explain away these coincidences by imagining Jeffrey Katzenberg slipping hints in about his disdain for his ex-employer. Whatever the truth, I love Spirit all the same, from Hans Zimmer’s super-Hans-Zimmer-ish score, to Bryan Adams’ songs, to the sweeping animation, and finally, even Matt Damon’s narration (though I’d still love the option on the DVD of removing it).

I really hope Quentin Tarantino lets some more of his scripts go out to other directors in the future, because the few examples we have of other directors dealing with his work, including this one, are really quite interesting. I remember reading an interview with Tarantino where somebody had asked him something along the lines of, “When are you gonna do a romance movie?” and he was like, “I did romance, I did True Romance!” It seems with each subsequent Tarantino movie, you can go back to this one and it seems more and more non-Tarantino-esque. Everything about this movie, including the remaining dialogue from his original script, seems to be striving for cuteness. From the Badlands like opening with Hans Zimmer’s imitation of the music and Patricia Arquette’s Southern drawl voiceover, to the repetition of the theme over dreamy close-ups of the characters as they have heartfelt revelations… even in the final shoot-out, feathers rain down on the blood… it all comes to a head I guess with the napkin on which Alabama (Arquette) scrawls “You’re so Cool!” It’s an extremely romantic movie in its own right, never mind “for a Tarantino movie…” This really is genuinely, so Cool!