I love horses. They are big beautiful animals and have contributed greatly to human development. But they are not human and projecting human qualities on them won’t get them any closer. Still, Spielberg knows how to work cinematic magic and hit all the right buttons to make us laugh, cry, cringe and even cheer once in a while. Warhorse is pure sentimentality. I guess that was to be expected with a Christmas release. Schindler’s List or Saving Private Ryan are not in the holiday spirit, in most people’s minds. The audience enjoyed the movie. The visuals are wonderful, the effects adequate and the acting topnotch as you’d expect. But I expected more.  The inaccuracies of the war scenes disturbed me, especially after the painstaking detail Spielberg took in Saving Private Ryan. The Great War shaped Europe and set in motion all the bad, ugly and good that came with rest of the 20th century. As the back drop of this story, details are probably not that important, but as the last veterans of WW I die, there will be no more first hand accounts of that horrific conflict. Spielberg, obviously, is following a standard formula for a feel good film and a boy and his horse adventure is a pretty formulaic. The silhouette shots at the end reminded me of Gone with the Wind and scenes from The Searchers. Spielberg hasn’t made a classic, but it will probably make enough to let him make more serious pictures that I’ve come to expect and look forward to.