Racing Stripes
"Babe" meets "National Velvet" meets "A Bug's Life" meets "The Jackie Robinson Story." That's probably how the pitch meeting for "Racing Stripes" went, and that's exactly how the movie plays. It could have been worse. They could have thrown in "Old Yeller" and shot the zebra at the end.
Simultaneously overplotted and simplistic, the new barnyard/racecourse comedy from Warner Brothers is predictable every step of the way, and it contains at least three too many poop jokes.
But it's sunny and inoffensive and, besides, you're not the movie's target audience, are you? My kids, while recognizing that they'd seen it all before, had a perfectly pleasant time -- even the picky older one -- and gladly gave "Stripes" three stars. It gets an even two from me, meaning no better and no worse than the standard studio kiddie fare, and thus we have a weighted average (because I weigh more) of two and a half stars. This is a science, folks, so don't try it at home.
"Racing Stripes" starts with the accidental loss of a baby zebra from the back of a circus truck onto a dark and stormy nighttime road. The foal is taken in by Nolan Walsh (Bruce Greenwood), a former star racehorse trainer embittered by the death of his wife in a riding accident; his teenage daughter Channing (Hayden Panettiere) names the animal Stripes and raises him to adulthood. No one from the circus comes looking for the zebra and no one really seems to care.
Did I mention that Stripes and his barnyard confreres talk? In a page swiped from "Babe," their lips digitally move and the voices of Famous Hollywood Stars issue from their furry little mouths. So we get Frankie Muniz as Stripes, Whoopi Goldberg as Franny the sensible goat, Mandy Moore as Sandy the filly, you-might-be-a-redneck comedian Jeff Foxworthy as Reggie the Rooster, Joshua Jackson as snotty young racehorse Trenton's Pride, and, just as I'm getting depressed typing this, Dustin Hoffman as a doughty pony named Tucker.
Tucker becomes the Burgess Meredith to Stripes's Rocky, convincing the kid he has what it takes to win the Kentucky Open, and Hoffman's impatiently honking line readings are about all that separate parents in the audience from the lobby. Between this and "Meet the Fockers," the actor deserves a Cy Young Award for most saves.
Stripes wants desperately to race at the course over the hill but is vilified as an outsider and a "freak" by the snooty horses on the other teams -- er, at the other stables. Nolan and Channing, meanwhile, are getting the ice-queen treatment from track owner and champion breeder Clara Dalrymple (Wendie Malick of "Just Shoot Me"), and Channing has to convince doubting dad both that she can ride and Stripes can win. Phew! Cliff Notes, anyone?
Then there's the film's low-comedy relief, which comes in the forms of a mafiosi "hit pelican" on the lam from New Jersey (Joe Pantoliano, hitting every "Sopranos" clich square on the head) and two computer-animated flies, Buzz and Scuzz, voiced respectively by Steve Harvey and David Spade. The two comedians are funny, even when Scuzz falls into a horse turd in a much-too-close close-up. Joey Pants is not, especially when the script has the pelican expelling droppings on the bad guys. Note to the four screenwriters: "Babe" didn't get a best-picture nomination for the cow flops.
"Racing Stripes" turns oddly melodramatic toward the end, when Sandy is somehow kidnapped by Sir Trenton (voiced by Fred Dalton Thompson), the sire of Trenton's Pride and a horse who would twirl his mustache if horses had mustaches. Otherwise, there's not an iota of doubt as to where the movie is headed and there are no surprises in getting there. Every so often, director Frederik Du Chau cuts to a bloodhound on the Walsh back porch who lifts his head, says something amusing in the drawling cadences of Snoop Dogg, then goes back to sleep. Parents may find this an eminently sensible approach.
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