A Fine Step - Horse Movie Review

by Sydney from HorseCrazyGirls.com
(Florida USA)

Overall, I liked this movie. It's a story of a girl whose mother has died (why does that seem to happen to so many riders in horse books and movies?? but anyway...) and she and her father move next to a world champion Paso Fino horse and rider. But there's been an accident and as a result, both the horse and rider are experiencing problems. The horse is skittish and the rider is injured. So the challenge is to try to get the horse back to competition level.

But there is a twist: their main competitor is secretly plotting to keep the horse out of the competition.

There were a few things that kind of drove me nuts in this movie.

In one scene, the main character hops on the horse for her very first ride ever. She's all alone and saddles up and trots out of the barn, riding like a pro. And of course she miraculously cures the horse of its problems on that one ride. I know it's every horsecrazy girl's fantasy to ride like that but seriously, it's kind of insulting for those of us who have worked really hard to develop our riding skills. (And of course my Mom was not happy that it's not safe to a. ride without a helmet and b. trot a horse on a concrete barn floor.)

Then in another scene she "frees" the horse from his stall with a lead rope hanging from it...The only good thing there was that her not-too-smart move did create problems. I won't spoil it for you but safe to say she probably wouldn't do that again.

(Though I had to laugh - my horse probably would have just hung around the barn grazing then gone back to his stall to look for more hay!)

I don't know alot about Paso Fino's and have never been to a competition involving them so I really enjoyed watching that part. I have no idea how realistic it was or whether the actors were riding properly for that level of competition, but I did think the animals were beautiful. The announcers in the last competition were great. There was a "guest" announcer who said stuff you'd never hear at a real competition but the older announcer handled it perfectly.

This is a family friendly movie and I think it could be enjoyed by a variety of ages. Overall, I'd say it was good. I watched A Fine Step
for free on Amazon Prime. It was certainly better than some of the cheesy horse movies I've seen, and most of the acting was fine, but it was uneven and with a few tweaks could have been great.