PLOT: To spare his daughter's feelings, a trainer decides not to have a wounded racehorse put down. She runs with that decision and helps rejuvenate the animal, giving the horse another chance at glory. That the family is also repaired in the course of the story is not beside the point.

Dreamer: Inspired By A True Story is the full if somewhat dopey title of a family drama about a girl and a horse. This is a lovely film; it's about a million times better than the other so-called children's or family movies out there.

In Dreamer, Kurt Russell plays Ben Crane, a horse trainer who has had a run of bad luck. The horses he trains now belong to other people.

A promising racehorse named Sonador -- Spanish for dreamer -- breaks a leg and becomes his property through more bad luck. The horse should be put down, but Crane spares the animal because his daughter Cale (Dakota Fanning) begs him to.

For Sonador's owner, Crane's behaviour is the last straw. The horse winds up being Crane's severance pay.

Unemployed and on shaky ground with his own father (Kris Kristofferson) and his wife (Elisabeth Shue), Crane carries on with the work of helping Sonador heal. It's really for his daughter that he carries on, and eventually, he turns the horse over to her for further training.

At this point, Kurt Russell turns the whole movie over to Dakota Fanning, too.

She takes the reins for the second half of the story. Cale decides to see if the horse will still race. Then she decides to ready the horse for the Breeders' Cup Classic, which happens to be an impossible goal. For starters, there's the $120,000 required for entry and other fees, and the Crane family doesn't have that kind of money.

But where there's a will, there's a way.

In Dreamer, one child's faith in an animal prompts everyone around her to step up and get with the program. Heartwarming? Yes it is.

The film is full of drama, with all the setbacks and the triumphs to keep things interesting, and it never talks down to a potentially young audience.

Children are fairly easily impressed at the movies, so for music, visuals and performance, Dreamer could be described as way better than it actually ever needed to be.

The Inspired By A True Story part of the title refers to the horse world saga of Mariah's Storm, a filly that broke a leg but recovered and went on to win a pack of races (and become the dam of Giant's Causeway, making her the grandma horsie of Noble Causeway, racing fans.) Just so you know.

BOTTOM LINE: Here's a family film that a family might actually enjoy. Call it a classic.

(This film is rated G)