It all starts with a zebra being left in the middle of the road on a rainy night, the only time things ever seem to get left behind in the movies. After almost hitting the baby animal, Nolan Walsh (Bruce Greenwood) takes it home to his farm where his young daughter sees it and says what every young daughter in the movies has ever said about a new animal, “Can we keep him dad, huh, can we?” And thus it begins.

Racing Stripes is not one, but two movies that duke it out like rivals over a property claim. One is about a barnyard full of talking animals and the other involves the zebra Stripes, now all grown up, who believes that he is a racing horse, because no one has ever told him otherwise.

The stuff in the barnyard I like. It’s filmed in such a way by director Frederik Du Chau, that we feel as though we have dropped into the middle of something that humans aren’t supposed to be seeing, the same way that children imaging their stuffed animals waking up while they are asleep. The ways in which the animals talk is through an effective animation technique, first employed in a wonderful 2001 film entitled Cats and Dogs, in which real animals are filmed and their talking mouths are later digitally imposed.

            Some of the barnyard voices include Dustin Hoffman as Tucker, a short horse that used to train winning racehorses, Whoopie Goldberg as a goat, Mandy Moore as Stripes’ female interest, and Frankie Muniz taking on the voice of Stripes, just to name a few. Voice-over talent in animation never used to be a big thing; anyone could do it. These days it pays to have a star’s voice on an animated character, and it shows here. Hoffman brings his usual energy to Tucker and has fun bickering with Goldberg; “we haven’t spoken Latin since the pigs left.” Joe Pantoliano has a lot of fun with Goose, a pelican from New York who speaks in intertext from famous gangster movies, and rapper Snoop Dog gets the biggest laughs as a lazy hound dog that never leaves the porch.

            All of this is well and good, until the film becomes bogged down with a plot so flimsy, so full of cliché and device, that without the gimmick of talking animals it wouldn’t have been able to support itself. After realizing that Stripes is a fast runner and could easily compete, Channing Walsh (Hayden Panettiere) decides that Stripes should go into training. Of course this brings us to that moment that we have seen so many times I’m determined to believe that it only exists in the movies. You see, Nolan used to be a prized horse racer, but has since retired, and forbids his daughter from racing Stripes. But then, in one moment of truth, kind of unintentionally funny considering the circumstances, he realizes that, through his daughters racing, he could reclaim his past glory, and show evil track owner Clara Dalrymple that there is more to him than a simple “petting zoo.”

            Next comes the day of the big race, where skeptics (many among them animals) gather to see a zebra race against a bunch of professionally trained horses. I know what you’re thinking; in one sweeping moment the zebra will loose all confidence, fall behind in the race because he believes that he doesn’t belong, and at that last crucial moment, through divine inspiration, gain all of his strength back to take home first place. Whether or not Stripes wins or not, I’ll leave for you to discover, but what happens is both testament to how fun the movie could have been, and how unsupported the racing plot was to begin with. The big race is not concerned about the win, the glory, or the people involved, it is concerned with how the animals interact with each other, which makes you wish that they had forgot the humans and stayed back at the barnyard to chat over coffee.

            I’ve come to a crossroads over Racing Stripes. I wanted to like it more than anything, and was even going to recommend it, until I thought about it over a cup of tea and came to my senses. It didn’t so much bother me that the humans never seemed to notice that their animals talked, or that actors seemed to walk on and off screen out of pure convenience. What bothered me was that what could have been an enjoyable family film, ultimately failed itself by moving out of the barnyard.

The best definition of a family film that I can think of is one in which both adults and kids can gain something from. Racing Stripes starts off well enough, but gets bogged down under a routine plot that it doesn’t need to be about. I guess the simplest way of looking at it is that Cats and Dogs found success with talking animals and Seabiscuit was a great film about horseracing that the entire family could enjoy, why not just cut out the middleman?