GORGEOUS 'SPIRIT' SADDLED WITH PREDICTABILITY.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

DREAMWORKS' latest animated spectacular, ``Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron,'' certainly has its wonderful aspects.

The tale of a proud mustang literally running for his freedom through the 19th-century American West gives us a gorgeous cartoon evocation of, well, the majestic, unspoiled American West.

Its combination of hand-drawn and computer-generated images is as seamless as has been heralded, while the film's hard-to-animate horses express a wide range of feelings while still looking, more or less, like horses.

And it's not just a movie for little girls, although it may take some effort to get young boys to sit through all the pretty pony stuff that leads up to the action-packed chases and truly awesome locomotive disaster the story has in store.

But with all of that and more to recommend, there's too much that's overcalculated about this ``Stallion'' to make the movie as free-spirited as its four-legged hero. From its predictable conflict between good nature lovers and greedy white men to its synthetic, Bryan Adams power rock songs, it's a manufactured fable whose style undercuts its message of wide-open abandon.

Following a long, single-take, eagle's-eye opening shot of enough gorges, forested peaks and amber wavescapes to match a lifetime's worth of national park visits, we come to the birth of Spirit. With an inner voice supplied by Matt Damon (none of the animals talk and his are the only thoughts we hear, which is a little strange but not too distracting), we watch him grow into the glorious, golden leader of his happy herd. Then one night, a curious phenomenon - campfire - piques Spirit's curiosity. Before he knows what hit him, another previously unknown hazard called a lasso sets him on a course of repeated encounters and escapes with bizarre, two-legged creatures, many of whom come with ridiculously designed, Victorian-era facial hair.

Spirit is sold to a cavalry fort, where the Colonel (voiced by ``Babe's'' James Cromwell), a manifest destiny martinet in the Custer mold, tries and fails to break him. A captured Indian, Little Creek (Daniel Studi), and Spirit escape, but the horse soon finds himself corralled at the tribe's encampment.

Little Creek exhibits an altogether different approach to taming, though, one that involves patience and communing with the animal ... and the not insubstantial inducement of a lovely and happily domesticated paint mare named Rain. The script, which is credited to ``Young Guns''-slinger John Fusco, is at its best when Spirit finds himself struggling with impulses that aren't solely about escape, that in fact work against that basic goal. Young stallions, it seems, can be as conflicted as young men about the trade-offs between freedom and love.

Directors Kelly Asbury and Lorna Cook, along with their fine crew of animators and technicians, can boast a number of best moments - although, as we obviously can't mention enough, the thing with the train stands out and will likely be what's remembered long after the rest of ``Spirit'' has faded into the pastel haze of childhood memory. For the moment, though, kids should have a stirring time at this beautifully drawn movie. And adults will at least have a dream image of the West to savor whenever the film's lamer instincts are in the saddle.

SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON - Two and one half stars

(Rated G: violence)

Starring: Voices of Matt Damon, James Cromwell, Daniel Studi.

Directors: Kelly Asbury and Lorna Cook.

Running time: 1 hr. 22 min.

Playing: Wide release.