To those whose bedroom walls were never adorned with photographs of wild, galloping herds, Black Beauty reads as pretty, but emotionally vacant.

If you can edge thoughts of sacrilege from your head, this Black Beauty works well enough as a bank holiday entertainment in the style of mid-20th century Disney television.

It's ultimately too inert, even with the changes, to make this familiar story leap off the page. Black Beauty isn't bad, exactly, but rather the kind of flavorless fare that underscores how hard really good family viewing is to corral.

It felt so derivative of so many better films