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‘Black Beauty’ Review: Kate Winslet Voices Beloved Horse in Family-Friendly Take on Classic Tale
Like so many beloved children’s classics, the story of “Black Beauty” has always been run through with blunt messaging, tough traumas, and the kind of painful imagery no kid ever really shakes off. Over time, some of those more realistic impulses may be dulled down for wider consumption — the sort of thing Disney has built its animated classics around, woe to the tyke who watches “The Little Mermaid” and then seeks out its source material — but the darker elements that author Anna Sewell oriented her 1877 novel around have mostly endured through countless adaptations. And while the latest, a family-friendly drama from Disney+ and filmmaker Ashley Avis, offers a slightly lightened up take on the material, its enduring lessons and charms hold fast.
Plus, there’s Kate Winslet voicing the horse of the title, a powerful bit of casting that can’t be denied. (And that’s to say nothing of the aces horse acting that goes into creating the on-screen Beauty, emotive and thrilling enough to ably drive home the story’s primary theme that animals have feelings, too.)
Sewell’s novel has been adapted many times over the years, and even Avis’ film’s apparent big twist (Beauty is a girl! and so is the kindly kiddo who loves her!) has been done before (the 1921 silent film version of the story featured a female protagonist, and that was nearly a century ago). But this “story of a wild horse and the girl she loved” has been freshened up in other ways, from its sensitive handling of grief (both human and equine) to its no-holds-barred plea for animal welfare.
