The Derby Stallion
Netflix | Amazon
Overall Rating: 4/10
Meets Expectations: -2
Apparent Rating: 2/10
The Derby Stallion really suffers from failure to implement formula. We are all familiar with “underdog makes good over bully because the bully doesn’t deserve success” formula. When you get the main character in the “underdog” role who is the son of a professional baseball player, it’s hard to see him as disadvantaged. There was no question that the bully was a bully, but that just looked like a complete breakdown in law-enforcement. (Someone should have put a camera up, taken video of the big-name kid doing thousands of dollars of damage and put him in jail. The kid says no one will believe the old man who is complaining, but that problem would have been solved by evidence… and chronic vandalism should have garnered the attention of the sheriff whose investigation would have generated the evidence necessary.)
We’re told that the reason people don’t like the old man is because he’s an alcoholic and black. But there’s no real evidence of alcoholism before we’re told that, so it does look like racism. He’s the only main character who isn’t white, which leaves the impression that the suburbs grew around him and he’s now unwelcome.
We’re told that the old man buys a racing horse. Then a handful of months later, the county forecloses on his property. It seems rather ridiculous that a house could be foreclosed upon without seizing the horse and truck… but having the house foreclosed doesn’t change anything.
We’re told that the winner of the steeplechase derby gets a college scholarship. Er. Not where scholarship==free ride, not to a real school anyway. There is no possible way that the purse for a steeplechase is more than $50K. Maybe they mean it’s enough to cover in-state tuition at a backwater school…. but even so, why does the son of a professional ball player desperately need a scholarship?
This movie was ridiculous, full of holes, it flings prejudices around but doesn’t deal with them, and is a really bad implementation of a feel-good family film. I am not the only one who thinks this because the movie has dropped $12 in price since it was released on DVD. I found it hard to finish watching and if I had known how it would turn out, I would have spent the 90 minutes watching paint dry instead. Originally, after first watching it, I was less offended. My Netflix rating says 2 stars out of 5, I know that is a rounding error. It is at most 3/10, and I talked myself down through the process of explaining what was wrong with this movie.
