Release Date: January 14, 2005
Starring: Bruce Greenwood, Hayden Panettiere, Wendie Malick, M. Emmet Walsh
The Voices of: Frankie Muniz, Mandy Moore, Dustin Hoffman, Whoopi Goldberg, Joshua Jackson, Fred Dalton Thompson, Jeff Foxworthy, Joe Pantoliano, Steve Harvey, David Spade
Directed by: Frederik Du Chau
Written by: David Schmidt
Distributed by: Warner Brothers
MPAA Rating: PG (mild crude humor, some language)
I am naturally suspicious -- and with good reason, I think -- of any animal that talks. My fears can be alleviated slightly if the animal in question is animated, or if it exists in a movie in which there are no human characters. But otherwise I am suspicious, because I have never in my life encountered a talking animal, and so find it very hard to believe that there exists an extremely high concentration of them in Hollywood, California.
I say this because I think such innate reservations may have prevented me from enjoying or even appreciating Racing Stripes the way the small children surely will. Granted, this is a movie that operates strictly at the age 8 and under level, so there may have been other obstacles in my way. Such as that it has an obvious, simple plot structure (the underdog makes good), the most complex developments of which are painstakingly reiterated by colorful, goofy characters who tend to speak in nothing other than easily understandable one-liners (“Don’t make me chew open a can of pony-whoop,” says a goat, by way telling a horse to be quiet).
But it also has a basic, wholesome theme of tolerance and acceptance (the main character, a zebra, wants to be a racehorse) that is agreeable with every set of family values on the planet. Racing Stripes, directed by Frederik Du Chau from a script by David Schmidt, is a thoroughly, unquestionably kid-friendly movie if there ever was one, a fact that we should probably stop to appreciate for the sake of parents who struggle weekly to determine whether new releases are suitable for their youngsters. Stripes has a PG rating, though only for “mild crude humor and some language,” or in other words, scattered utterances of nonsensical curse words like pony-whoop. For my part, I’m not really sure what pony-whoop is, so I find it hard to object, and I doubt very many parents should, either.
If anything is objectionable in Racing Stripes, it is the presence of Bruce Greenwood. Greenwood, a talented character actor who single-handedly elevates this movie to marginal respectability with his subtle, quiet screen presence, is much too good for this movie. He plays Nolan Walsh, a Kentucky farmer, widower, and onetime horse trainer who discovers Stripes (voiced by Frankie Muniz), a zebra mistakenly abandoned by a traveling circus in the movie’s opening scene. Convinced by his 16-year-old daughter Channing (Hayden Panettiere) to keep the zebra, he soon learns that Stripes has a passion for racing. But though Channing is quite eager to race him -- leading to some awkward scenes in which she professes her love for the zebra -- Nolan, who has become overprotective of his daughter since his wife’s death, only agrees after he is challenged to a race by Mrs. Dalrymple (Wendie Malick), the Turfway Club’s imperious chairwoman.
Meanwhile, a separate but parallel drama plays out among the animals: Stripes quickly develops a rivalry with the arrogant Trenton’s Pride (Joshua Jackson), a Dalrymple horse who thinks he’s better than Stripes because he lives in a first-class stable. The rivalry only deepens when a filly named Sandy (Mandy Moore) appears to prefer Stripes to Pride. Encouraged by his barn-mates -- a goat named Franny (Whoopi Goldberg), an old horse named Tucker (Dustin Hoffman), a rooster named Reggie (Jeff Foxworthy), and a pelican named Goose (Joe Pantoliano) -- and trained with the help of an old-time track scout named Woodzie (M. Emmet Walsh), Stripes prepares for a climactic showdown at the Turfway Club with Trenton’s Pride.
The voice cast is first rate, and the stars behind the scenes are clearly recognizable and in some cases well cast: Joe Pantoliano, who is probably best known for his stint on TV’s “The Sopranos,” does well as a goombah pelican from New Jersey who crash-lands on the Walsh Farm. And Steve Harvey and David Spade provide comic relief as Buzz and Scuzz, a pair of flies who circle the Turfway Club: Unsure what to make of Stripes, they eventually settle on the conclusion that his black-and-white coat makes him the racetrack referee -- whereupon they fall into an argument as to whether he is a black horse with white stripes or a white horse with black stripes.
But for every clever moment like this, Racing Stripes spends an equal amount of time in eight-year-old mode, catering to youngsters with screwball, slapstick comedy and simplistic, cliché-ridden drama. The Walshes and their friends, and the animals that live on Walsh Farm, are “good” characters because they laugh and joke and have a good time. You can see that Nolan loves his daughter Channing and that she loves him (hopefully more than the zebra), and that their disagreements are the perfectly normal, middle American arguments that occur between countless fathers and their 16-year-old daughters. When Stripes trains for the big race against Trenton’s Pride, he does so without any of the high-tech facilities available to his opponent (a somewhat laughable and probably unintended near-parody of the training montage before the big fight in Rocky IV) but rather with the love and encourgement of his friends.
Trenton’s Pride and the other horses on Mrs. Dalrymple’s farm, by contrast, are always serious and have no fun at all; in fact, fun is actively discouraged by Pride’s father, the gruff Sir Trenton (Fred Dalton Thompson). As the antagonist, Mrs. Dalrymple is essentially the turf club version of Cruella de Vil, a snobby elitist who breeds animals for profit and is consistently seen wearing the two staples of cornball female villainy: ridiculous dresses and wide-brimmed hats -- both of which consistently compete with her outsized sneer and endless supply of staggeringly malicious dialogue. All of these scenes and set pieces are designed to work toward one end: Convincing kids that Mrs. Dalyrmple and Trenton’s Pride are bad, and that Stripes, Nolan, and Channing are good.
But while such one-dimensional devices may be necessary for the very youngest viewers, kids, on the whole, are smarter than Racing Stripes gives them credit for being. This is why the movie never manages to transcend its kid-flick boundaries the way, for example, 1995’s Babe did: It remains firmly committed to exclusively entertaining younger tastes while throwing only the occasional bone to older ones. Were it not for the high-profile cast, this would probably have been a direct-to-video release. Its heart, though, is clearly in the right place. It’s difficult to fault a movie that earnestly encourages children to share wholesome values like friendship, tolerance, and mutual respect, especially in a time when most filmmakers seem determined to grab kids’ attention by pushing the envelope rather than imagining new ways to work within it.
-- Craig Roush (craigroush@hotmail.com)