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Back Shelf Beauties
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Racing Stripes What is Willie Waffle's first rule of comedy? Talking animals are funny. It never fails! We love to watch animals talk and act like humans, which is why the best scene in Meet The Fockers is when the cat flushes the dog down the toilet (people, that's classic comedy). In Racing Stripes, no one gets flushed down a toilet (David Spade comes close, so if you hate him in those annoying Capital One commercials, you might enjoy watching that), but we get treated to some fun, wisecracking farm animals, and a sweet story with the right messages for kids. Frankie "Don't Call Me Malcolm" Muniz provides the voice for Stripes - a baby zebra accidentally abandoned in Kentucky as the circus rushes out of town during a massive rainstorm . A local horse trainer and farmer, Nolan Walsh (Bruce Greenwood), finds the little guy and gives him a home at the farm, but Stripes grows up thinking he is a racehorse, not a zebra. After three years, he has started to show signs of possible racing greatness, falls in love with a jumping horse at the stables next door, Sandy (voice of Mandy Moore), and forms a rivalry with the son of a great champion, Pride of Trenton (voice of Joshua Jackson). When Nolan's daughter, Channing (Hayden Panettiere), wants to start racing on Stripes, will Nolan let her? Can Stripes be trained to become a champion racehorse? Can he handle the ridicule he receives for being different? Time and time again, Dustin Hoffman amazes me. You'd think I would take into account his TWO Academy Awards (which counts for SOMETHING), but Hoffman has shocked me with his brilliance in three movies over the past few months. He was hilarious in I Heart Huckabees and Meet The Fockers. Now, he brings the necessary heart and soul to Racing Stripes as he provides the voice of Tucker - a Shetland pony on Walsh's farm who helps train Stripes and acts as a surrogate father for the young zebra. While most of the talking animals, with voices by such talented people as Whoopi Goldberg (Franny the Goat), David Spade (Scuzz the Fly), Steve Harvey (Buzz the Fly, who is Scuzz's older brother, and funnier than Spade), Jeff Foxworthy (Reggie the Rooster) and Joe Pantoliano (Goose the mobster "hit man" Pelican), are in the movie for comic relief, Hoffman is there to be the voice of reason like a veteran who has seen it all before and imparts his wisdom and life experience on the young ones who need help. While the others are working it hard for laughs, Hoffman gives his character the calm, confident tone of an older man/horse who cares. Racing Stripes could have gotten by with some crazy antics and funny one-liners from the animals, but writer David Schmidt thankfully makes it more emotional and dramatic than that. Yes, the movie has more fart and poop jokes than necessary, along with some use of questionable language (the word ass is used at least twice, another character references the pelican's "pecker," and kids might be confused by constant mafia related jokes), and a dark scene featuring implied violence against another animal character, but Schmidt emphasizes the importance of support from friends and family in a way that is heartwarming (making this a much better movie for kids than the offensive Catch That Kid or the dreadful Sleepover). As the concerned Dad, Nolan is not made into a villain or bumbling fool, just a guy who wants to protect his daughter and still feels the pain of an earlier tragedy, while the farm animals become Stripes' family and always look out for him. The kids get plenty of lessons about overcoming adversity, working hard to achieve your goals, defying the odds if you want to conquer an important challenge and coping with being different than everyone else. None of it is heavy handed or preachy, which is a welcome relief, and the hardest, coldest, most cynical heart will enjoy the outcome, even if it is cliché and predictable. Along with all of that, adults will be entertained by Schmidt's little twists on familiar themes like being from the wrong side of the fence instead of being from the wrong side of the tracks, or director Frederik Du Chau's hilarious Rocky 4-like montage of modern, high tech training methods versus old fashioned, low tech training on the farm (somewhere, Dolph Lundgren wishes he could have done the voice of a Russian horse). Additionally, I'm sure you will all pick out the funny mobster movie lines spouted by Goose among other references sprinkled throughout, so adults can rest assured they won't be twiddling their thumbs in boredom. Racing Stripes is a pleasant surprise. 3 Waffles (Out Of 4) Copyright 2005 - WaffleMovies.com
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