Dream Horse: A Rousing, Galloping Britcom, with Toni Collette in the Lead
By Liam Lacey
Rating: B-plus
Whatever losses the United Kingdom has suffered in its coal mining and steel mill industries over the past quarter-century may have been partially offset by the box office of a steady stream of working-class feel-good dramedies.
We can start with The Full Monty (1997), through many iterations (Saving Grace, Brassed Off, Calendar Girls, Billy Elliot, On A Clear Day, to name a few).
The rules of the genre are that the humble protagonist pursues an improbable goal, an act of faith which restores frayed relations, revives the weary and gives an economically depressed community a boost of self-esteem.
Toni Colette and her Welsh village’s meal ticket in Dream Horse.
Welsh director Euros Lyn’s reality-based steeple-chasing feature Dream Horse never deviates far from the expected course. But its off-kilter humour and an ace cast, led by the ever-credible Toni Collette, brings some fresh colours to this unabashed crowd pleaser.
Colette plays a real-life character here, a middle-aged Welsh barmaid and grocery clerk, Jan Vokes, in the South Wales former mining town of Cefn Fforest, who formed a local syndicate to breed a champion horse. Vokes’ story was already successfully beta-tested through a hit documentary, Louise Osmond’s 2015 Sundance audience winner, Dark Horse. Euros Lyn and screenwriter Neil McKay do nothing to disguise where their story, already well-known in England, is heading.
The film’s establishing scenes are especially atmospheric, as empty-nester Jan wakes up early in her small home, squeezed in the bed by her husband, Brian, aka Daisy (Owen Teale, of Game of Thrones) and a shaggy wolfhound.
After walking past family pictures and trophies from prize pigeon and dog show competitions, she checks in on an invalid pet goose, recovering in a kitchen drawer, and heads out to meet her day. She makes an unsuccessful effort to adjust the broken headlight on her old Toyota and walks by a couple of ponies, loose on the village street on the way to her job at the co-operative supermarket.
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After work, she visits her aged parents and returns home to make tea for her arthritic husband, who spends his days watching animal shows on the telly, stopping occasionally to pay attention to their pet goat or dog. After tending to Brian, Jan heads to her second job, pouring beer for the regulars at a workingmen’s social club.
At the club, Jan hears a customer, a cocky tax accountant Howard Davies (Damian Lewis), bragging about the race horse he once owned. Although the bartender tells her the full cautionary story – that Howard was only part of a syndicate and lost his savings on the horse – the story sets her dreams of a more exciting life.
Picking up tips from the magazine rack at the store where she works, she decides the first step is to acquire an inexpensive brood mare, and then raise money for the cost of artificial insemination from a high-priced stud. She passes handbills around the town, and arranges an inaugural meeting at the social club.
There, the future owners --- the village busybody, a woman butcher, a widow with a passion for gooey biscuits (Siân Phillips) and a freeloading barfly (Karl Johnson) -- pull up chairs around a billiards table to launch their longshot venture.
The mare is purchased and stabled in a shed on their garden allotment. When the foal is born, it is named after its ownership team, Dream Alliance. After an unpromising introduction, Dream Alliance gets accepted by a world-class trainer (Nicholas Farrell), and as one of the new owners declares, they’re off to the races.
The initial excitement isn't always sustainable, either for the syndicate or the viewer. As it moves into the stretch, Dream Horse gets repetitious, with a cycle of of victories and setbacks, galloping hooves and excited fans, periodically interspersed with soulful speeches about how the horse “Dream” has given lives meaning.
Benjamin Woodgates’s musical score, mixing folkie acoustic instrumentation and orchestral flourishes, can be obtrusive -- though it gains some fresh notes with the use of songs by Welsh artists (Super Furry Animals, Tom Jones, Manic Street Preachers).
Yet, there’s regularly moments of salty humour to undercut the sentimentality, as the common folk – Jan in her clunky hair clip and shapeless tops, Brian with his blacked-out teeth -- and their motley friends invade the private enclaves of the horsey set. And, for those who crave beauty, you can’t surpass the vision of a bay stallion on a green course in mid leap.
Dream Horse. Directed by Euros Lyn. Written by Neil McKay. Starring: Toni Collette, Damian Lewis, Owen Teale. Dream Horse is released theatrically on Aug. 6.