This update of the 1941 novel and 1943 film retains the wholesome messages and love of gee-gees (yet switches the main character from a boy to a girl) with the well-cast Alison Lohman as a wilful teen whose true passion lies in the traditionally male job of horse-ranching.

Katy (Lohman, twenty-five but passing for ten years younger) is a bright girl with bad grades at the private boarding school her family scrimp and save to put through, while their ranching business teeters on financial collapse.

Discovering a wild, young female mustang she christens Flicka (Swedish for “pretty girl”), over the course of one eventful summer Katy will face adult choices, near tragedy in a well-staged rodeo gone awry, and come to realize she and her strong-willed father are not as different as she petulantly believes.

Director Mayer demonstrates a lighter, more relaxed touch here than in his turgid debut, A Home at the End of the World.

He can’t resist some sledgehammer symbolism (Flicka’s wild passion mirrors Katy’s), and the film contentedly chews its way through a nosebag script, but for a family movie it admirably resists cutesifying the horses and ably carries a saddlebag of emotion come the climax.

Maria Bello and Country & Western singer Tim McGraw provide solid support as believable parents, but this is Lohman’s show, proving she’s a natural replacement for the too-much too-soon Lindsay Lohan.

Handsomely mounted and well-acted, with nothing to shock or offend, it’s what Sunday afternoons were invented for.

Rob Daniel