The moderate financial success of the excellent original 'Black Stallion' movie almost guaranteed a sequel considering the series of novels of available source material.

Unfortunately, the absence of Carroll Ballard's unique vision reduce this effort to a by-the-numbers horse-and-boy adventure story which is likely to be of interest to children only. So, we get a welcome return of 'The Black' and Alec Ramsey, but sadly, the magic is mostly gone.

I have only read the first few pages of the book 'The Black Stallion'. It is obvious that the book is a good children's' story and that Mr Farley's legacy has been to encourage reading in several generations of American children. I suspect that this sequel movie, with its more conventional storytelling approach is closer to Mr Farley's works than the first movie, but this does not make for memorable cinema.

Mr Ballard must have turned this one down, because I can't imagine that he was not offered the director's chair given the reception the first movie received. Maybe he didn't like the 'action movie' script? He seems to be very particular about the movies he makes.

Performances here are generally lacklustre and there is one particularly bad hammy supporting actor turn - if you've seen this, you know who I mean.

One part of me can't help but wish that they hadn't bothered with this. It doesn't spoil the original exactly, but the excellence of the first 'Black Stallion' movie so far outshines this effort that you wonder quite what the point of this was, other than a quick cash-in at the box-office.

One point of excellence - Georges Delerue's theme 'Alec and The Black Stallion' is a wonderful soaring score and could have been a welcome addition to the original movie soundtrack.

Your kids will probably enjoy this. Your mind will probably wander...

Greg