It’s the holidays and who knows what fresh horror 2025 will bring into our lives, and also there hasn’t been an inspirational horse movie for a decade or so, meaning a nice old-fashioned parable about how you can beat the odds with some moxie and pluck is just the escapism we need since we all know that’s some bullshit IRL
When an alcoholic businessman spends the last remnants of his father’s trust on a racehorse and a barrel of whisky, his family finally cuts ties with him.
But that’s okay! He has big plans! One of his drinking buddies is a legless aspiring jockey, and together with a down-on-his-luck imaginary horse trainer played by Ryan Reynolds they plan on molding their colt into a prize-winning racehorse. Feeding the horse a steady diet of spinach in hopes it will give it Popeye-like strength they enter him into contention, and are promptly told the horse cannot race due to its distended midsection and the fact that the jockey keeps getting thrown off the saddle.
As they are guiding the horse back to its stable, something amazing happens- with a thunderclap-like boom the horse suddenly discharges all of its spinach-induced intestinal gas and sails through the air, into the stable, and clear through the wall on the other side.
The horse is dubbed Airbiscuit, and with a few saddle modifications to ensure Brown Pollard, the jockey, cannot be so easily flung from his seat, the race wins begin stacking up. In a clever bit of merchandising following a few wins the team begins selling Airbiscuit-branded gas masks, because them horse farts do be stinkin’.
And just like that the picture ends with the warm and timeless message that generational wealth, despite any and all bad behavior, will always win the day.