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If wishes were horses beggars would ride, they say. But in Dreamer wishes are horses and horses with broken legs win races and everything is hunky-dory, all black and white. The need of the hour, however, is to suspend belief and credibility as in the title and indulge in this fairy-tale dream, which is essentially for children below 10. Adults with horse sense will also be happy with all that goes on about racing, the classic horse races and raising horses and fillies. It’s autumn, or the fall as they call it in the West, and from the opening aerial shot to the Crane household the visuals are fetching. But it is director-scriptwriter John Gatin’s maiden venture and it shows. Ben Crane (Kurt Russell), once a great horseman but now a trainer, is beset with problems. First, he has differences with his dad (Kris Kristofferson). Then he loses his job after a tiff with the owner (David Morse). But he has a charming, horse-loving little daughter Cale (Dakota Fanning) who makes up for his ill fortune and finally takes over the horse business and a supportive wife (Elisabeth Shue). And of course the horse Sonya, whose broken leg has to mend in order the win the Breeders’ Cup Classic. Dakota Fanning is the child star very much in the news today and she surely does justice to the role, which must be taken with copious doses of salt and all else recedes in the background. Kurt Russell goes through a whole gamut of emotions and Kris Kristofferson lends able support though it’s light years since the singing star played opposite Barbra Streisand in A Star is Born. But Russell and Kristofferon are well cast as father and son. There are also good cameos by Freddy Rodriguez as the jockey and Luis Guzman as a stable hand. The establishing shots are not impressive but as the film plods on (it is at no time gripping), the little girl Cale seems to grow on the viewer. Some of the incidents, however, are too simplistic, but the warmth of the Crane family with its old-fashioned values is indeed heartening. The outdoor locales provide visual relief and one gets used to the slow pace but it is a different subject from the usual pot-boilers churned out these days and if one is in the mood to dream, well Dreamer might just be the thing you’re looking for. So dream, dream dream... — E.E.M.
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