In and of itself, there's nothing really wrong with The Young Black Stallion, Disney's belated attempt at a prequel to the 1979 Academy Award-winning film. The question of whether or not to take the kids to it depends upon if you want their minds to be open to the possibilities of movies or simply want them to be distracted for an hour. You aren't likely to find anything objectionable about it (it's one of the few kid's movies that's actually rated G), but it isn't daring or risk-taking, either, qualities that should be emblematic of a wild stallion.
It's kind of like only allowing your child vanilla ice cream for dessert. It's relatively healthy and if it's all they've ever known, they'll probably enjoy it. But if cinema is good for anything, it's for opening our imagination to the world around us, something children need most of all.
The story will be overly familiar to anyone who's seen, heard or read most any horse story before. There is always a wild horse, a child who slowly and miraculously tames said horse, and a climactic race at the end.
Here we have a veritable carbon copy of the original film, with some of the details smudged a little to make us feel as though we're getting something new.
In the original, a young boy is on a journey when he's separated from his family. Here the protagonist is a young girl. In each case, the child is lost and alone until befriending a wild black stallion. The boy used seaweed to coax the animal, here we're in the North African desert and the girl gets our title character a drink of water.
The cast includes Richard Romanus as the girl's grandfather, and a bunch of people I've never heard. The bad guys aren't really evil; they're just insensitive and steal the young colt's mother away. At least it's not as traumatic as shooting Bambi's mom.
The film is only being released in IMAX theaters, which means we get a much larger picture for much smaller ideas. It's directed by Simon Wincer (best known for Free Willy), who two decades ago made a really good horse movie called Phar Lap. Of course, the core audience for this film wasn't even born then, and won't know anything better until you offer it to them.