The Black Stallion Returns is a completely different movie from the first one. Instead of taking place on a desert island, or a New York farm, it takes place in the desert, far outside of Casablanca. Instead of being about a boy and his horse, it’s about a boy trying to get back with his horse. And then some.
(Hmmmm. It’s time to see Casablanca again. And maybe the Marx Brothers’ A Night in Casablanca just for fun, too!)
But it’s the same kid, and mostly the same horse. And life goes on, eh?
Once again, there’s the requisite horse race. Since it wasn’t on a sandy race track, but rather in the rocky desert, I wasn’t as worried about the horse breaking a leg. Go figure.
It’s a good movie, and if you’ve seen the first one then you are forced to see this one too. You might be a little disappointed, but there will be no permanent damage.
One IMDB review says that it shows Arabs and Muslims as people, not just as Terrorists. Well, maybe. There’s still a lot of stereotyping going on.
Twenty or more years ago I had a professor from Lubbock who pointed out that all the Arabs in American movies are bad guys. I mentioned Sallah, from Raiders of the Lost Ark. He wasn’t familiar with the movie but added, “Then he must be there for comic effect.”
It’s not just that the bad guys in this movie are buffoons. The “honorable” folks are a little too easily manipulated as well.
The guy who played Monk is Iranian. Monk is not a stereotypical character. Neither is the engineering guy from Galaxy Quest. Maybe if you dressed those characters in robes and placed them at an oasis, then I’d say they were oafish and stereotypical. But I don’t think so.
Anyway, it’s a movie well worth watching. There’s one brief curse phrase. Which really surprised me. And I even wondered, why didn’t he say that in Arabic? It might have been even more effective.
