It surprised me to find only two reviews of this film so far. Bearing in mind that the source novel was on the best-sellers list for ages and selling over a million copies, this film version seems to have been massively overlooked. It is not a bad film but for me, it does not live up to the bonkathon tag much hyped by the popular press.
The characters were well presented and one could not fault the cast in their acting but there was the nagging feeling that the equine world of this film was not a world most people would have noticed had it not been for certain royal personages to be involved in equine events. Still, the horse riding scenes were well done with the stunt people and the actors merging seamlessly together.
The biggest problem for me however was the running time of almost 200 minutes - too long for a film. My feeling is, a mini-series would have been better.
The characters were well presented and one could not fault the cast in their acting but there was the nagging feeling that the equine world of this film was not a world most people would have noticed had it not been for certain royal personages to be involved in equine events. Still, the horse riding scenes were well done with the stunt people and the actors merging seamlessly together.
The biggest problem for me however was the running time of almost 200 minutes - too long for a film. My feeling is, a mini-series would have been better.