Fresh Horses is a 1988 American coming-of-age drama film directed by David Anspaugh, and starring Andrew McCarthy and Molly Ringwald.

University of Cincinnati senior Matt Larkin has the picture-perfect life - he comes from a well-to-do family, has good grades, is well-liked by his peers, hosts Bingo games for the elderly, and is engaged to his girlfriend Alice.

One day, after class, his best friend Tipton introduces him to Sproles, a fellow student who has a brother that works as an undercover cop.

They tell Matt about their night out in the country filled with seedy characters, beer, and music in a house owned by a woman named Jean, and invites him to join them on their next visit.

Disappointed, Matt goes to the kitchen to fetch a beer for Tipton and runs into Jewel, a neighbor who comes to Jean's house to escape her abusive stepfather.

She tells him that she met Green at a bar and tried to make him sign the annulment papers, but he refused and she ended up being exhibited and sexually assaulted in the back of Matt's car.

When Matt angrily confronts Sproles, he says that he saw Green holding money he won from betting, and that Jewel might have perceived it as payment to be exhibited.

He runs into Jewel at an ice skating rink and finds out that she's divorced from Green, is attending high school, has quit smoking, and introduces him to Steven, a classmate she's dating.

Dann Florek directed, and the cast also included Mark Benninghofen, John Bowman, Marissa Chibas, Alice Haining and Havilland Morris.

[2] Frank Rich of The New York Times wrote that the play: Is more a collection of lively scenes and funny speeches than a sustained work; it doesn't so much come to a point as slow to a halt.

If this playwright writes rather formlessly – and can still hand inarticulate characters erudite authorial pronouncements – he has finally perfected the pitch of his comic voice.

That voice is not the Deep Southern belt of Eudora Welty... but the twang of the modern border states, where new money has eroded Dixie tradition and landscape alike.

"[9] In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Michael Wilmington said, "[t]here's a lot to admire in the film adaptation of Larry Ketron's play 'Fresh Horses'" and called the dialogue "fresh, sad and funny."

He also praised the work of director Anspaugh and cinematographer Fred Murphy, saying they give the movie "a very distinctive look: moody and poetic, grainy and wistful, drenched with a sad, faraway, forget-me-not drizzle of passion and regrets."