Racing Stripes

RACING STRIPES

by Jane Louise Boursaw

Rated PG (for mild crude humor and some language). 102 minutes. Directed by Frederik Du Chau. Released Jan. 14, 2005.

On a rainy night in Kentucky, a circus caravan breaks down and accidentally leaves behind a basket containing a baby zebra. Horse trainer Nolan Walsh (Bruce Greenwood) picks up the orphan in his old truck and takes it to his farm, where his teenage daughter, Channing (Hayden Panettiere) falls in love with it and names it Stripes.

The Walsh farm occupies high ground above a racetrack. In fact, Nolan used to train horses, until he fell into depression after his wife died in a riding accident. Now he’s forbidden Channing to follow her lifelong dream of being a jockey.

The animals on the Walsh farm are all real, voiced by a stellar cast: Frankie Muniz as Stripes; Dustin Hoffman as Tucker, a short-tempered Shetland pony; Mandy Moore as Sandy, a white mare who falls in love with Stripes; Whoopi Goldberg as Franny, the goat; Joe Pantoliano as a pelican named Goose who’s on the lamb from the mob; and Snoop Dogg as Lightning, an old hound dog who never leaves the porch. There’s also a couple of animated flies (voiced by Steve Harvey and David Spade), who provide comic relief and of course, the obligatory crude humor required by all kid movies.

There’s also the usual cast of villains: Wendie Malick plays Clara Dalrymple, an upper-crust snob who will do whatever is necessary to make sure her horses (also villains) win.

WHAT WE LIKED: My kids – 7 and 10 – both enjoyed this movie, although my daughter, the horse-lover, enjoyed it more than my son, who prefers more action and less talk. The barnyard animals were fun and the message simple: go for your dreams (even if you’re a zebra and want to be a race horse).

WHAT WE DIDN’T LIKE: Not much new to this formula plot, and it ran a little long in spots. Unless some film-maker comes up with something dramatically different, I think the real-animals-that-talk films will run their course eventually.