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Racing Stripes Our rating: Rate this movie   MPAA rating: PG (for mild crude humor and some language) Theater release: January 14, 2005 by Warner Brothers Directed by: Frederik Du Chau Runtime: 1 hour 24 minutes Cast: Hayden Panettiere (Channing Walsh), Bruce Greenwood (Nolan Walsh), Dustin Hoffman (voice of Tucker), Frankie Muniz (voice of Stripes), Mandy Moore (voice of Sandy), Jeff Foxworthy (voice of Reggie), Snoop Dogg (voice of Lightning), Steve Harvey (voice of Buzz), David Spade (voice of Scuzz) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

Pity the poor zebra who yearns to be a racehorse. Neither nature nor breeding have given him the strength or stamina to outrun a thoroughbred, and what's more, the animal in question—an abandoned zebra named Stripes (voice of Frankie Muniz) who is found and adopted by a retired horse trainer named Nolan Walsh (Bruce Greenwood)—has suffered a lifetime of taunts from barnyard animals who think he's a little, well, different. And just to add insult to injury, even when Stripes gets a movie all to himself, the marketing team assigned to promote the film forgets what species he is. "Cheer 'til you're horse!" proclaim the ads, which is just the sort of thing to make a zebra's identity crisis even worse.

Stripes (voiced by Frankie Muniz) and Channing (Hayden Pannetiere) form a bond from the giddy-up

Oh, but let's not be too serious. Racing Stripes is a live-action cartoon, one of those films in which real animals speak human dialogue through digitally animated lips and teeth. As these things go, the film is certainly nowhere near as interesting or entertaining as the two Babe movies, but it is probably better than Cats & Dogs, if only because it has a fair bit of heart and takes place in a natural world that people of all ages can relate to. As directed by Belgian animator Frederik Du Chau (Quest for Camelot), Racing Stripes may have its problems—more on those in a minute—but in its own modest way, it is a fun, charming little family film that should keep the kids happy while giving parents a chuckle or two.

The set-up is pretty straightforward. Stripes has grown up next door to an estate where thoroughbreds are trained for the Kentucky Open, and he envies the bigger, more muscular horses who get to flaunt their speed on a regular basis. The horses, of course, mock Stripes for looking kind of funny, but one day they challenge him to show his stuff at the "blue moon races"—an illicit late-night equine gathering, apparently patterned after the midnight street-race scenes of The Fast and the Furious. The sight of all these beasts sharing a secret world far removed from their masters is one of the film's more inspired touches.

Channing and her dad (Bruce Greenwood) get Stripes ready

Suffice to say Stripes doesn't come out of the experience looking too good, but his prospects do begin to improve shortly after that. When a New Jersey pelican who says he's fleeing the mob drops by—thus opening the door to many mafia-movie references—he proceeds to do Stripes a favor and "whack" the motorcycle that belongs to Nolan's daughter Channing (Hayden Panettiere); since there are no other modes of transportation around, Channing rides the zebra to her job at the racetrack instead. One thing leads to another, and before long, both Stripes and Channing are training for their big day at the races.

Ironically, considering this film is supposed to be about animals, and considering most of Du Chau's previous film experience has been in animation, some of Racing Stripes' most convincing moments consist entirely of scenes between real live humans. Nolan Walsh is a widower who used to train horses at the nearby track himself, but he gave that up years ago when his wife died in a riding accident; so when he tries, at first, to prevent Channing from riding the zebra at all, let alone in the race, she naturally feels he has given up on life and has become too protective of her. The exchanges between them may be written in a rather perfunctory manner—obstacle, resolution, obstacle, resolution—but Greenwood and Panettiere invest their scenes with emotional truth. They give the movie its heart.

Buzz (voiced by Steve Harvey) and Scuzz (David Spade) get a fly's-eye view on things

That may be a problem, however, if the story is really supposed to be about the animals. As with most farm-set films of this sort, the animals are supposed to represent a living, thriving community that eventually comes to the aid of our protagonist, but the characters themselves are mostly caricatures—Jeff Foxworthy as a redneck rooster, The Sopranos' Joe Pantoliano as a wise-guy pelican, Snoop Dogg as a lazy, um, dog—and they don't quite connect with one another the way they ought to. Steve Harvey and David Spade provide the voices of Buzz and Scuzz, a couple of comic-relief horseflies whose rap-music covers and regular fart-and-poop jokes are only intermittently funny (though the kids will like 'em). And, as the lead zebra and his filly girlfriend, Muniz and Mandy Moore lack the vocal presence that we might expect from creatures of their size and heft. Only Dustin Hoffman truly delivers the goods, modulating his voice to humorous and touching effect as a grumpy Shetland pony who, like Nolan, seems to have given up on reliving past glories.

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