If you love Heartland, then you'll love this movie. The family owns some land, which is available for people to rent (for camping, horse riding, etc.) and people can rent horses from the stables. However, they barely make any money and live in a trailer, so they just do it out of love for horses. Whenever they see injured horses, they do whatever they can to help, even if it means canvassing the whole town. Well, what's left of the town, seeing as everyone's been moving away after the mills closed down. It's a great family movie for any time of the year, and encompasses a lot of Canadian culture. The cinematography of the mountainous landscape is beautiful, and gives the movie a peaceful feel.

Matt Davidson (Aidan Quinn) and his son are looking for a couple of snowmobilers lost in the woods. On the way, they spot a couple of horses stranded on the snowy mountainside. Money is tight for the family and Matt is looking to sell the place especially for his wife (Kari Matchett). The daughter Nikki (MacKenzie Porter) is concerned about the horses and hates selling. She refuses to give up. Simon is an amateur filmmaker who likes her. He starts doing reports on the horses. The SPCA sends Dr. Kumar to examine the horses but he's more experienced with marine animals. He relents to give them 4 days while they arrange for an airlift. Animal lover Fiona comes to help the horses recover. The group of environmentalists don't really get along with the old style Davidsons after the lost of logging in the area. When the doctor claims that they're too weak to fly out, Nikki starts digging a path out of the mountain by hand.This is a compelling movie about the small guys against great odds. It is inspiration and heart warming. It's kind of like 'Big Miracle' where people got whales out of being iced up. It is based on a real story but like most of these movies, lots of stuff are changed. I don't have any problems with that as long as it's in the service for a better movie. The second half is a bit anti-climatic. The story really peaks when Nikki starts digging. The movie tries to amp up the last half with the wolf attack but it's a bit too fake.

We watched this movie thinking it was a docudrama and would provide information about the real story. I read the book written by the women who was the 'true' main character and the only factual thing in this movie are a couple of names and the fact that the two horses were stranded. The movie changed the characters and their involvement, left out several of the main players, altered the story time line, and then fictionalized about 90% of the movie. The result is a very bad telling of the event including a preposterous wolf attack. The actual story is fascinating and is not well served by this TV movie melodramatic script that is so flimsily based on the real events. Tragic, it could have been done so much better.

We just watched it tonight for a family dinner together and we loved it. There's so little on TV telling globally enjoyable Canadian stories to ourselves and the world, and based on a True Story to boot no less, The Horses of McBride is doubly fantastic for all that. Definitely 5 star annual Xmas time classic story, or for any time of the year. We say Excellent work telling that story to all the film people involved, and to the actual real people who did it, even more so. Don't want to give away any details here to spoil it for anybody, though reading the online descriptions probably says as much as that it is a very warm happy story/movie through-out, very inspiring for all ages, and left us feeling very good.