Sarah Brown is sent to England after her parents die in a car crash. There, she lives with her aunt Velvet who introduces Sarah to the world of equestrian competition and gives her the last foal of her own prize horse, The Pie. Under the watchful eye of her aunt and horse trainer Capt. Johnson, Sarah develops into a talented rider who might have a shot at the Olympics.
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I grew up with horses with cups won in Horse Shows and I held a Pilots License - I know how impossible it is to deal with a terrorized horse and, although this result seemed heartless,it was the only choice after tranquilizers did not work. I just tuned into this this morning by accident and thought the movie was a real winner with more of the Olympic competitions included than just "bites". The locations and integrity to the action in filming were excellent. I hope to see it again and tape it. We often see the Shows at Spruce Meadows in Calgary Alberta on TV and it is now a premier event in the world for Show Jumping. That facility is a wonderful site and very close to the cross-country hazard jumps shown in the movie. This is an outdoors world class arena and often held under less than perfect conditions - it is quite exciting to watch for me as I am no longer able to get as close to horses as much as I would wish.
This movie is my all time favorite movie. I want to be riding Arazonia Pi! This is definitely how i want my life to turn out (riding career wise)!!! Even better than National Velvet. If i could i would watch this movie day after day and i wouldn't even get the least bit sick of it. If you are an eventer you should definitely see this movie. It i an inspirational movie. Makes me want to go back to the barn and ride again or go to another event.The love that this girl has for her horse is wonderfully delightful. The support she gets from her aunt Velvet and her "Uncle" is also great. People from the age of 2 to 190 will like this movie. There are sad parts, happy parts, parts that make you mad, all kinds of emotions.
It really was folly to attempt to recreate the innocent magic of 'National Velvet' years later, but in 1978 they went ahead and did it. Velvet has now grown up (and turned into Nanette Newman!) and is looking after her orphaned niece Sarah (a young and talented Tatum O'Neal). Tatum loves the horses too (naturally) but this time her ambitions are higher than her aunt's - she wants to enter the Olympics.'International Velvet' is ok, and stands up as a film in its own right; but doesn't have the gloss or magic of the first film. This could just be that it was made for another audience entirely, but in a more cynical world, it was destined to bomb.Character actors in the cast do their best to liven things up (Christopher Plummer, Anthony Hopkins, Peter Barkworth, Dinsdale Landen, Richard Warwick) but this horse race doesn't really run.
This is a good, enjoyable and fairly accurate depiction of the eventing world, with plenty of good riding action (shot with real event riders, not stunt actors) - a perfect movie for riding fans. Yes, it is set in a world of fairly wealthy people with posh accents, but that is the context of the film. You don't find many ethnic minority people from housing estates, with cockney accents, competing in top level eventing (even now).Fans of the book National Velvet will spot lots of inconsistencies (The Pie isn't piebald and the dates are wrong). If viewed as a completely separate film in it's own right, though, then the interactions between the heroine and her 'adoptive' parents are very genuine. Even so, the plot is incidental to the riding and so some parts are a bit weak, but that won't bother any horse fans. And to the various reviewers who commented on the heroine being played by an American actor - they obviously haven't actually seen the film because the heroine is American.