FILM REVIEW; An Old-Fashioned Cartoon of the West

The animated feature ''Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron'' is ostensibly about the herds of wild horses that once roamed the West, though the film, which opens nationally today, may be more closely concerned with another endangered species: the animated film as a hand-drawn, hand-painted artifact.

Films like ''Shrek'' and ''Monsters, Inc.'' have left no doubt that the future of theatrical animation lies in computer-generated imagery. Working with pixels rather than pencils, animators can now create volumes, textures and spaces with a three-dimensional solidity that has come to make the old methods suddenly look flat and insubstantial.

In ''Spirit'' the figures are animated essentially in the traditional, hand-drawn way (though many effects seem enhanced by computer means). They include the title character, an independent-minded young mustang (with the inner voice of Matt Damon), who after a distinctly Bambi-like upbringing in the wild (loving mother, distant father) is captured by soldiers of the United State cavalry. He is delivered to a nameless colonel (with the voice of James Cromwell and the golden locks of George Custer) who does his best to break the noble beast, just as he does with another captive, Little Creek, a defiant young Indian with the voice of Daniel Studi.

The directors, Kelly Asbury and Lorna Cook, have dropped these two-dimensional figures down in an expansive, three-dimensional landscape, where they look wispy, slight and out of place. While the backgrounds evoke the familiar vistas of the classic American westerns, from computerized evocations of John Ford's Monument Valley to the tortured, mountainous terrain of Anthony Mann's great films of the 1950's, the horses and the humans in the foreground look like refugees from a dull children's book.

''Spirit'' is clearly a transitional film; the publicity material includes a quotation from Jeffrey Katzenberg, one of the film's producers, bravely describing its blend of traditional and computer techniques as ''tradigital.'' But it is also clear which way the transition is going. As it stands, ''Spirit'' provides neither the profound human touch of the great Disney animation of the past, nor the dazzling, high-tech fun of present-day digital cartooning. For children raised on the digital gleam of the Pixar features (''Toy Story,'' ''A Bug's Life,'' etc.), ''Spirit'' will seem as ordinary as Saturday morning television.

The script by John Fusco (''Young Guns'') doesn't help to dispel the general drabness. Like Disney's 1995 film ''Pocahontas,'' ''Spirit'' is strangled by ideological preconceptions that require the Indian characters to be as insufferably saintly as the white invaders are unspeakably evil.

From two dimensions, the picture quickly dwindles to one. As images of natural life forces threatened with destruction by death-dealing ''civilization,'' Spirit and Little Creek end up functioning as metaphors for each other, which is to say, as pure clichés.

''Spirit'' might have been helped by some comic relief, one of those cute, chattery characters with the voice of Eddie Murphy or Robin Williams. But instead the film must make do with a handful of power pop ballads performed by Bryan Adams. It's enough just to hear the swelling opening bars of a song like ''I Will Always Return'' to picture the soggy production number it will inspire at next year's Academy Awards.

SPIRIT

Stallion of the Cimarron

Directed by Kelly Asbury and Lorna Cook; written by John Fusco; animation supervisor, Kristof Serrand; edited by Nick Fletcher; music by Hans Zimmer with songs by Bryan Adams; production designer, Kathy Altieri; produced by Mireille Soria and Jeffrey Katzenberg; released by DreamWorks Pictures. Running time: 82 minutes. This film is rated G.

WITH THE VOICES OF: Matt Damon (Spirit), James Cromwell (the Colonel), Daniel Studi (Little Creek), Chopper Bernet (Sergeant Adams), Jeff LeBeau (Murphy) and John Rubano (Soldier).