This feeble 'Flicka' is no friend to filmgoing families

There are so few family-friendly movies and even fewer with girls at the center that I feel awful slamming a movie that is both.

Neigh? Nay. Flicka is a bronc you shouldn't put money on. Gumby's sidekick Pokey has more personality than the free-spirited mustang in this spavined update of Mary O'Hara's beloved tale of the rebellious youngster who identifies with a wild horse.

In this version of the book, the basis of a popular 1943 film and '50s TV series, director Michael Mayer changes the gender and age of the central human. Nine-year-old Ken is now 17-year-old Katy (Alison Lohman), untamed and unbridled, just like the mustang she finds at the fringes of the family ranch in Wyoming. Katy names her Flicka, Swedish for "pretty girl."

Katy can't do anything that pleases her disapproving dad, Rob (Tim McGraw), a breeder of quarterhouses. He doesn't want the mustang to taint the stock of his thoroughbreds. Yet so connected to Flicka is Katy that she takes her father's scorn of the horse as a personal rejection. The daddy-daughter conflict is at the heart of this film that doesn't appear to have a pulse.

Lohman, the versatile actress of White Oleander and Matchstick Men, is easy on the eyes. Likewise Maria Bello, who plays Katy's supportive mother. But in this shapeless - and for long sequences pointless - film, they are two actors in search of a screenplay. McGraw, so explosive in Friday Night Lights, looks visibly uneasy here. He scarcely makes eye contact with his co-stars. The same might be said of the mustang who plays Flicka.

If all you ask of a movie is that it have scenic stars and some scenery (here the Sierras of California substitute for the Rockies of Wyoming), then Flicka is adequate. Me, I expected some conflict, some resolution, and a horse that took me on a wild ride. This one really never gets out of the gate.

Contact movie critic Carrie Rickey at 215-854-5402 or crickey@phillynews.com.

Flicka * 1/2 (out of four stars)

Produced by Gil Netter, directed by Michael Mayer, written by Mark Rosenthal and Lawrence Konner, photography by J. Michael Muro, music by Aron Zigman, distributed by 20th Century Fox.

Running time: 1 hour, 34 mins.

Rob McLaughlin. . . Tim McGraw

Nell McLaughlin. . . Maria Bello

Katy McLaughlin. . . Alison Lohman

Howard McLaughlin. . . Ryan Kwanter

Parent's guide: PG (mild suspense involving horses)

Playing at: area theaters