Racing Stripes

Racing Stripes (Director: Frederik Du Chau)

The trailer for this advertised Du Chau as some heavy-hitter in whom we should all be familiar, much like Space Jam touted Joe Pytka. His other film is the animated Quest For Camelot, which came out in 1998.

This is an average family movie, which means it does a good job in being a nice outing at the movies for kids, but as storytelling the film is awful frustrating. The movie is a cross between Babe and Seabiscuit, as an outcast zebra named Stripes (voice of Frankie Muniz) is raised to believe he's a horse, and wants to take up racing, and with all the amount of ridicule from other horses that this entails.

There are a number of roadblocks. Farmer and former horse-trainer Nolan Walsh (Bruce Greenwood), who has lost his wife from a horse riding accident and has vowed never to get involved in such things, especially careful not to let his daughter Channing (Hayden Panettiere) get mixed up in racing. There are several villains to add to that, from a stud thoroughbred named Sir Trenton voiced by Fred Dalton Thompson (yes, long-time actor who served as Tennessee senator), his son Trenton's Pride (Joshua Jackson) and his son's friend Ruffshodd (Michael Rosenbaum, Lex Luthor on "Smallville") to a wealthy horse owner (Wendy Malick).

Friends include the Shetland Pony Luther (Dustin Hoffman), goat Franny (Whoopi Goldberg), flies Buzz and Scuzz (Steve Harvey and David Spade), gangster Goose (Joe Pantoliano), and love interest jumping horse Sandy (Mandy Moore).

Here's my beef with the film. So, you give animals a personality and we sort of expect those animals to act that way consistently, but when it comes to blending in a real zebra's personality with the earnestness of Frankie Muniz, it becomes bothersome, especially when the zebra is taken to race and is suddenly afraid of the freakin' starting gate. No explanation is offered, even when Luther comes up to give him advice, "Everyone is afraid of the gate at first but then you just get used to it," is the sort of discussion you hear, but no one says why, and since the character of Stripes has been shown as a wannabe racer with all sorts of conviction, I'd have liked to hear what's so scary about the gate (something you always see with horses at Derby time). I think it's one of those mysteries in life that the filmmakers don't want to answer for themselves because they don't want to appear wrong, but if you're going to give me talking animals, I'd think you'd at least try.

And yeah, also, if we're going to have secret Grease-style races in the middle of the night, where reputation is earned, and we're going to have villain horses who try to cripple the zebra before the race, and kidnap his love interest, none of which makes any sense at all (amusing as all that may seem, how exactly do these horses pull off major plans when humans are in charge anyway?), then I think we could've stretched a little bit more for something that would make sense.

The humor? Let's say it's not a bit surprising that poop and fart jokes make up a solid percentage of it, from Goose (who's a "hitbird," and you can tell what that means, yes...sloppy white poop from the sky!), to the flies, who not only land in disgusting things like a half-eaten hotdog with ketchup and relish (in full close-up!) and a pile of horse doody (in full close-up!), but also fart themselves (like there's something else we need to find in flies that is disgusting).

There's also a few matters of the final race, almost like the circumstances in Fat Albert, where normal rules don't apply. Stripes gets all sorts of help from Buzz and Scuzz, and Luther, during a race that is probably 5 times longer than a real race (I didn't check the time, but fast it was not), and it sort of taints the message about heart.

More voices: Snoop Dogg as dog Lightning (completely pointless, and the sleepy dog on the steps probably represents the amount of work Snoop did on this film), Michael Clarke Duncan as a Clydesdale who runs the "illegal" races, and Jeff Foxworthy as rooster Reggie.