Review: 'Dream Horse' runs a familiar route as an inspirational sports movie, but with plenty of charm from its cast

It’s almost a given that “Dream Horse” will hit every plot point and emotional high spot a based-on-a-true-story sports drama is supposed to. What makes it fun is how director Euros Lyn and a top-drawer cast get there.

The story is a charming one, of how Jan Vokes (played here by Toni Collette), a supermarket cashier and part-time bar waitress in a small town in Wales, overhears a pub regular talking about how he lost 5,000 pounds as part of a syndicate that invested in a racehorse. Jan works with that chatty pub regular, tax adviser Howard Davies (Damien Lewis), to start a syndicate among the townsfolk — two dozen of them, each pitching in 10 quid a week at first.

Jan and her husband, Brian (Owen Teale), have turned their allotment — their backyard, we’d call it into the states — into a small farm. So they buy a brood mare, named Rewbell, and add her to the menagerie. With Howard’s help, they plow the syndicate’s money into a stud fee, and soon Rewbell gives birth to a foal, which they name Dream Alliance.

Screenwriter Neil McKay’s script is centered on Jan’s efforts to get Dream Alliance up to racing fit, by hiring a veteran trainer (Nicholas Farrell) who sees “spirit” in this unlikely thoroughbred. There’s some solid humor in scenes where these small-town investors get to rub elbows with the rich in the owners’ club. And there’s a tender subplot involving Howard and his wife, Angela (Joanna Page), who vowed to leave him if he ever got mixed up in the horse trade again.

Lyn, a Welshman whose work is mostly in TV (including many episodes of “Doctor Who” and “Torchwood,” productions filmed in Cardiff), ensures the flavor of Wales permeates the film. Several of the cast members — including Teale, Page and the great Siân Phillips, playing one of the investors — are Welsh. So is the opera singer Katherine Jenkins, who makes a cameo singing the Welsh national anthem at the Welsh National steeplechase, where the movie has its climax. (Apparently, the other Welsh national anthem is anything recorded by Welsh icon Tom Jones — and the movie’s closing credits feature a pub singalong of “Delilah.”)

Every beat of “Dream Horse,” from training montage through adversity to that big-race finale, is comfortably predictable — even more so if you’ve seen the 2015 documentary “Dark Horse,” which told Dream Alliance’s story first. What makes “Dream Horse” worth a view is how this sharp ensemble cast, led by Collette’s sweet and earthy performance at the center, brings this winning story across the finish line.

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‘Dream Horse’

★★★

Opens Friday, May 21, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for language and thematic elements. Running time: 113 minutes.