Hidalgo: Review By B. Alan Orange

Hell Mission Statement #40252: HIDALGO

To those who didn't get a Pony for Christmas...

What? Are you all on crack? IT’S ONLY A MOVIE! Of course most of the crazy shenanigans held within the framework of this lackadaisical show horse never happened. It isn’t real. You sweaty pathologists needn’t work that knife in overtime on my account. All you have to do is take a quick look at Disney’s tight pre-show trailer. Those computer-assisted sandstorms, that sky chock-full of black-soot locust, the digitally painted orange and purple hues of a fading desert sun. You’re going to suck that soda down with a straw then be disappointed when you learn from some surreal fact checker that it isn’t an authentic account of actual events?

Please.

If you’re going to put that much thought into it, you’re retarded. Every movie is an embellishment of the truthful truth. Don’t be a hooker. So they lied? So what? Everybody lies. This is an adventure film; a throwback. It’s pure escapism. It’s not meant to be life changing. Did we cry foul when Disney’s revisionist Johnny Appleseed premiered to a more innocent American populace?

I don't think so. I don’t know. Maybe we did. I wasn’t around for that maelstrom of misbehavior. Doesn’t matter. This thing, here…It’s ‘based’ on a real story; a true prairie tale. That means they soaked a piece of meat in a bag of jerk-truth marinade. It’s been bathed in factuality, but the deep meaty tissue has been manufactured by Hollywood. Get over it. Why do you have to butterfly stomp on a harmless candy sour? It’s entertainment. So they changed a few facts in the Frank T. Hopkins biography. Big Deal. The horse was actually named Joe. Frank wasn’t a Native American Half-Breed. Neither the Horse nor the man won an endurance race of any kind. There never was a desert princess. To me, a faithful account doesn’t sound like a whole Hell of a lot of fun. If it does to you, you’re a boring drip-o-drool and I don’t wanna know ya!

Personally, I enjoyed the film. Lucky for it, all that sh*t-talk in direct relation to its fraudulent ways got buried underneath the weight of Mel Gibson’s J. Sauce controversy and the whole Christ whoopteedoo from last week. I guess Jesus has a bigger cross to bear than some duded-up Spotted Mustang with computer generated eyeballs.

Yeah. Hidalgo.

That crazy pony. He blitzes like Dick Butkus into the back end of the future. Despite all the horse sh*t focused around the factual truth behind Frank Hopkins’ life story, I’d have to say this one’s a keeper. Excruciatingly slow at times, the sheer glow of its sympathetic weight had me hooked. That bent lure snagged the tender skin of my cheek muscles, stretching them out and piercing the peel between my teeth with two tiny droplets of blood. This is one of those odd achievements that you don’t necessarily enjoy while it’s on the screen, but damn if you’re not appreciative of its efforts a few hours afterwards. The cinematic equivalent of a Muscle Beach Lemonade Cheese on a Stick, this thing leaves a sticky residue that had me craving dust and saddles for days.

Watching it play out in real time, Hidalgo comes on like a sloppy mess swept off the editing room floor. You can feel something is missing. This looks like a complete package, but bits and pieces have been dumped behind the K-Mart dumpster. Director Joe Johnston has tossed out a lot of nuts and bolts, hoping they’ll go unnoticed. Yeah, he’s praying this thing will stay together even though it vibrates and rattles the entire way down its descending hill of depravity.

It's like a lemon. Joe’s self-stately squeezed the contents, flushing out the tasty juice. The narrative is compressed as if it’s been left under a steam iron. Watching it is a loose ride. It bumps and jars from scene to scene in a haphazard manner. I’ll admit it’s a little disconcerting to watch. Especially if you pay attention to continuity and the slight shifting of tectonic plates as laid out by the rules of good cinema. Yet, throughout the course of the journey, you get a real sense of this enormous amount of time as condensed into a two-hour movie. I came away from the screening feeling as if I’d just partaken in an epic 100-day journey. Then I looked at my cell calendar and realized it was still only Tuesday. So, I personally feel that Johnston completed his task. What he was trying to do in terms of congesting the focus of the expedition worked for me. Albeit in a weird, off sort of way.

“Hey, Orange, why is Viggo only hot when he’s dressed up like that dude from Lord of the Rings? I mean, he’s kind of creeping me out in that hat.”

“That, I do not have an answer for, my wearisome female acquaintance.”

Viggo.

Viggo is awesome. Viggo is my pal. I like him in the rucksack, captured in digital bits. He is from Argentina and drinks Mate'. Quilmes is from Argentina. Quilmes is my favorite beer. It’s been too long since I had one in my hand; the Von’s strike keeping its distributors at bay during what seems like a 3-year picket slide. God, what I wouldn’t give to suck down an imported six-pack the next time I’m watching some goofy Disney movie. Viggo reminds me of Quilmes. He has some of the same qualities. He is blue labeled coolness drenched in the cold-hard beauty of Patagonian hops and mineral water. I dig his latest offering. One: Because of his sheer presence alone (yes, he really is part Lakota Indian on his mother’s side). The guy embodies all that is meant to be old fashion adventure at its finest. Two: The surreal Cowboy-Horse relationship between Mortensen and his horse TJ (a Spanish Mustang acting the part of Hidalgo). What they bring to the screen touched me in a peculiar way.

This run-through of the dusty trail mythos, where the only love relationship seen is between a macho stud and his faithful steed, reminded me of my own relationship with my broken down ’94 Tercel. When Viggo puts that gun to Hidalgo’s head, ready to kill the damn dying thing, it brought back many a memory of me standing beside the white line of the Interstate, ready to blow holes into my car’s leaky radiator. I certainly identified with this one man’s struggle. And the way the horse raises to the occasion, lifting off the ground in spurts and bubbles of agony, came like the time my car stalled in a ditch, only to levitate past the field beyond the road moments after the incident. Me and my Tercel never won any type of cross-country race, but I’ll be damned if I haven’t traipse it’s wheels from one end of this great country and back again at least three times. Viggo & Hidalgo. Orange & J. Tercel. The rapport between the two groups is one in the same…

Watching Viggo and Hidalgo win their race brought a much-needed pang of joy into my otherwise stony heart. This thing carries a real sense of those old timey escapades that I miss from when I was a kid. Sure, I knew they were going to win, but damn if it doesn’t take them forever to reach that finish line. This really is an endurance race had in the seat of the Maitreyaplex. I didn’t cry when they won by a tongue’s length. But when Hidalgo keeps going past the finish line, running another couple hundred yards straight into the rolling waves of the ocean, I just about lost it. I don’t know why. I guess because, for the horse, it wasn’t about the race. It was about hitting that cool surf. That touched the untouchable parts of my soul that I keep under lock and key.

Sue me.

The blatant CGI work kind of bothered my artistic tastes. I felt they were uncalled for. They didn’t fit the otherwise rustic look of this antiquated beast. Especially the cougars that attack Hidalgo, Viggo, and a couple other jockeys on the lame. Their inherent counterfeit quality came on faker than anything dug out of the Hopkins bible. They can’t even end this scene. It just cuts to something else. Another bit of squeezing that ruins the overall continuity of the piece in whole.

Oh, well. I’ll get over it.

Hidalgo is better than Starsky & Hutch. I’d pay to see it again. You, on the other hand? You’re retarded. I don’t know what you’d do. But you’ll probably go do it anyway…

Adios, Farewell, So Long…

And leave me out of it next time, you big jerks.

PS - Horses R4 F*gs.