This is a true storyIn 2001, Jan, a barmaid in a local English pub decides she wants to breed a race horse. She convinces 30 of her townspeople to invest in this venture. They do and name the horse Dream Alliance. Jan and her group pay the hefty costs of getting a known trainer, Phillip Hobbs, to train Dream Alliance. To the amazement of all Dream Alliance wins races, but in one race was kicked by the hoof of a horse in front of him and a tendon was sliced. Stem cell surgery saves him and he is able to race again. This is - without a doubt - some story. It is a documentary and starts out like a Ken Burns documentary with still pictures and narratives. After a while the still pictures go away and we see actual footage of Dream Alliance in races and posing for pictures with the owners. The narratives continue throughout with interviews of the owners. Many of these personal quips are pure gold and some are truly funny and there are too many to relate here, but you will enjoy them. There are 2-things that I didn't understand: (1) we never see trainer Hobbs with Dream Alliance; we do however, see him talking about Dream Alliance; and (2) we never see or hear any jockey with Dream Alliance. I thought these were huge oversights. Okay, one other thing; we never hear or see news blurbs about Dream Alliance, but we do see the headlines. Also there are never comments from the rich owners about Dream Alliance. One would think they would say something whether good or bad and maybe they declined comment for this production. Who knows?In any event this is a beautiful, most delightful and unbelievable true story. Yes, there may be times you will need a box of Kleenex at the ready. You will get the feeling that Dream Alliance knew what was expected of him and he did all he could to do his best. If he could talk I am sure he would have said that. (9/10)Violence: No. Sex: No. Nudity: No. Language: No.

This movie is about a bunch of human friends who do not have movie star looks nor a lot of money. They chip in to syndicate the birth of a race horse. They go into the financial details and negotiations in a good humored way. The mating process happens and the horse born is a beautiful creature. The connection of this horse to the owners might be more sentimental than average because they are not rich people. They are not experienced but hire an experienced trainer.Some of the discussions take place at a pub table. There is some digression, mostly humorous. The background music is simply beautiful classical.If you have gone to a race or ridden or touched a horse you know they have a personality. You get that from this movie. You might feel greater things about your pets.The horse is not perfect. I will not divulge any race results. We all have our own first and last races. I won't mention how much they invested nor if they gained or lost money. In the end, this is a movie about working friendships and collaboration between humans and animals. A beautiful movie which evokes emotions and memories. This is a great movie about great relationships with a great animal. And we are all imperfect even the great.

It's a definite feel-good movie, and in addition to that, it's one of those movies that if it was a fiction piece rather than a documentary, you'd say that something like this couldn't happen. As I live in the USA, I was completely unfamiliar with this story, as there's not exactly a lot of coverage here regarding thoroughbred racing in Wales. But that's a good thing, because I had no idea where this story was going to lead, and how it was going to end.My only small criticism of this movie is that like many documentaries, there are a number of re-enactments of what occurred at earlier times. I'm not a big fan of those, but other than that, it's an enjoyable experience seeing this film.

Who doesn't enjoy listening to a real life story about a bunch of working class people who go out on a limb and invest what little money that they really cannot afford to spend, to see if their dream of owning a winning racehorse for a chance to enter the unattainable winners circle and have their picture taken with their champion racehorse?This is a well produced documentary style story of a group of 30 people who agreed to invest a weekly amount of 10 pounds for an entire year to bankroll a horse fund of $15,600 pounds. Their bankroll allowed them to purchase a mare for a paltry 600 pounds and find a stud with some racing credentials to which we get to witness the actual birth of this teams dream. By group consensus they chose to name their new colt Dream Alliance.Next, the group went looking for a horse Trainer to which they agreed to pay top dollar for securing his knowledge. Their logic in securing an experienced Trainer was they could have paid less for an inexperienced Trainer but they felt that since their yearling had no experience and neither did they, they had a better chance drawing from a well experienced Trainer to pass his knowledge on to their horse, than having an inexperienced Trainer pass on as little experience to an even greener horse.This story has its ups and downs and rather than give away any spoilers it is suffice to say that this group of 30 shared in Dream Alliance's victories and losses and that they seemed to have accomplished the impossible going from Nags to Riches over a several year period. What Mrs. Shullivan and I drew from this truly inspirational film was the sheer pride and joy Dream Alliance brought not only to this group of 30 investors and their extended families, but also to the small town they lived in, and eventually across all of Wales. This is a heartwarming true story with many narrative scenes occurring in the local towns pub where the original investor Jan came up with her idea to breed her own racehorse. It is a warm and sincere film well worth watching. I give it an 8 out of 10 rating.