Rented this through Blockbuster vending machine for my grand kids. It didn't take 15-minutes before they were griping about how stupid it was (and they weren't even ten-years old). To say this production was poorly made would be to give it a compliment which it doesn't deserve. Bad writing and editing, dialog that could only be surpassed by reading the phone book from cover to cover aloud and more wooden performances than a Pinocchio family reunion are just the tip of how awful this film was. Five years since viewing it, it proves that some things unlike cheese and wine don't improve with age. "Wildfire" can safely be added to this list. This dud puts family-values films in a very bad light. I give a "1" only because "1/2" isn't and option.P.S.A great family values film? Bought worse for $5.00 at Walmart? Compared with what other titles? You'd really have to scrape the bottom of the bin to find anything more putrid. Granted it's not like the zombie- themed flicks that seem so prevalent these days. But come on, make more like this? Whatever family value lessons "Wildfire: The Arabian Heart" might have to share are buried by terrible acting, script writing that needs some intensive RIGHTING and technical problems that just shouldn't have happened in the hands of a skilled director, producer and editor. When kids below the age of ten will tell you within five-minutes--"This movie is boring", then you can say accurately never have so many dollars been wasted so badly so that so many viewers can eject this disc so quickly. Revised my rating from one star to none.

The only positive thing to say about this film is that it makes Coleman Francis's "The Skydivers" look good by comparison. I strongly suspect it was made by community-college film students or by people who desperately needed union cards. The plot is like an outline of every horse movie ever cross-pollinated by a family drama (or rather a failed attempt at one; as we know nothing about the characters when the 'dramatic revelations' are revealed, we don't care), the footage looks like it was shot with a camcorder, if by some miracle the sound recorders and editors are in the union they should be kicked out, the credits look like they were made by someone playing with Power Point fade-ins...the movie alleges to be about a girl finding her true love (with whom she has as much chemistry as she does with the John Deere utility vehicle) while training to ride a horse in a big race. The teen actors can't act, the horse is basically there to stand around (SPOILER: he drops dead of "age", despite being in what for an Arabian is early middle age at best, most failure to research, before this big race can come off) and be patient, the movie has more free-range children than a 1950s Japanese monster movie (the heroine's little brother has more genuine emotion and chemistry saying goodbye to his friend, who we've never seen before and will never see again, than she does with anything). At least one line is blatantly cribbed from Star Wars for no reason any sane person could determine. The woefully fake "electric fence" shock is an apparent attempt to reference Jurassic Park but would work better if the director and editor had some idea how to use cutaway shots. Frankly I wouldn't be at all surprised if they filmed at ValleyFair Amusement Park by buying tickets and smuggling their cameras in their backpacks. The vet character is only ever filmed with his face obscured-clearly the smartest person connected with this film. I give this one star because zero isn't an option, though I suppose I ought to give it two for finally showing me there are movies out there worse than "Red Zone Cuba" (because hey, at least that had John Carradine singing the theme song.) Thank God I got this in a DVD bundle for $3 with a halfway-decent movie at Wal-Mart. I sincerely hope no one connected with this production ever saw a dime from it. They owe anyone who ever sat through it instead. I've sat through the worst Mystery Science Theater had to offer (yes, even the unedited, un-snarked versions of some, like "The Head That Wouldn't Die".) By comparison, they're all art. The horse was pretty.

Overall the story is good, and the plot is believable, but other than that it seems to have been produced by amateurs. Writing was horrible at best. Acting is well, obviously pushed. Who played Lindsay's brother. Really? That's the best they could have done? And her mother? I am guessing she has zero acting history. Chemistry was not there. But with a low budget you rarely get quality talent. In some of the scenes I don't think they even used a sound engineer. The echo and background noises are right there. I wanted to write a better review, but just couldn't lie.

From the beginning, it looked like a home-made! Nothing against home-made or low budget films, they can be good -- but this one surely isn't! How it got a rating of 8+ I don't understand, I guess the 10 votes came from relatives & friends of these amateur actors. It just went from bad to worse, bad acting, very bad sound and editing, awful directing etc. etc. -- it is simply impossible to do the subject justice. Most of the time it sounds like the actors are reading their scripts off, the sound fades and some actors' voice come across muffled (maybe their mikes didn't work? Or they were too far away from the recording mike.) Scene changes are arbitrary, sometime a bunch of new characters appear on screen without being introduced in any way, then later they may just walk off to the side, leaving the set. Well, enough said...