How did we get here? No, I don’t mean how did the human race devolve to the point that we’re discussing a movie about a talking zebra that wants to be a racehorse.
Although that is a valid question.
No, how did a zebra find its way onto a Kentucky farm that lies next to a big track? “Racing Stripes” suggests that a zebra colt was left behind by a traveling circus, and kept by the widower farmer and his young daughter. (They never try to find the owners, which seems an irresponsible course of action. But the movie needs a premise.)
Dad (Bruce Greenwood, from “13 Days”) used to be a horse trainer, but gave it up when his wife was killed in a riding accident. The zebra, dubbed Stripes, is tended for three years by daughter Channing (Hayden Panettiere). She wants to ride Stripes like a jockey, but Dad disapproves.
The animals talk, “Babe”-like. Stripes (voiced by Frankie Muniz) wants to run, and gets encouragement from the rag-tag band of farm animals: a cranky Shetland pony (Dustin Hoffman), a maternal goat (Whoopi Goldberg), and a pelican that lost its way from Jersey (Joe Pantoliano, doing “Godfather” shtick).
On the other side of the fence, both literally and culturally, lies the racetrack, where a group of thoroughbreds sneer at Stripes’ short legs and, well, his stripes. Confirming just how weird this movie is, the voices for the horses include former Sen. Fred Dalton Thompson. (By the way, this Kentucky setting was filmed in South Africa.)
Low comedy is provided by a pair of talkative computer-animated flies, voiced by David Spade and Steve Harvey.
Spade and Harvey have the movie’s wackiest moments, and the most tasteless. They are sort of like a Greek chorus commenting on the action, if you can imagine a Greek chorus made up of horseflies.
The human contingent at the track includes a wicked owner, Wendie Malick, and a grizzled gambler, M. Emmet Walsh.
The weakest thing about this movie is the trumped-up message of tolerance. The horses are all mean to Stripes, treating him as an outcast, because apparently it’s not dramatic enough that a zebra is trying to run against thoroughbreds.
Look, a zebra can’t outrun a racehorse, so this movie isn’t trying to be credible. It’s for kids, and the kids in a preview audience were having a good time.
The only thing that distinguishes “Racing Stripes” from one of those lame live-action 1960s Disney pictures is the quotient of poop jokes. I could handle the pelican’s habit of guano-bombing his enemies.
But when the two flies land on a pile of fresh horse puckey and begin dining, I felt like the technical capacity of computer special effects had crossed over into a realm of entirely unwanted realism.
Hayden Panettiere rides Stripes (voiced by Frankie Muniz) in “Racing Stripes.”
“Racing Stripes” H
Pretty lame: A pet zebra wants to be a thoroughbred racehorse. We know this because the animals talk, in a movie that has a plea for tolerance and lots of poop jokes.
Rated: PG rating is for subject matter.
Now showing:
“Racing Stripes” H
Pretty lame: A pet zebra wants to be a thoroughbred racehorse. We know this because the animals talk, in a movie that has a plea for tolerance and lots of poop jokes. It’s pretty lame, despite the celebrity voices for the animals (Dustin Hoffman, Whoopi Goldberg, Frankie Muniz).
Rated: PG rating is for subject matter.
Now showing: Alderwood, Everett Mall, Galaxy, Marysville, Mountlake, Stanwood, Metro, Pacific Place, Woodinville, Cascade.
Robert Horton
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