Racing Stripes: Critic Reviews

For the jaded adult, there's something casually terrifying about Racing Stripes.

Racing Stripes is unlikely to ascend to the pantheon of perennially watchable children's films, but like its hero, what it lacks in skill, it makes up for in heart.

Almost everyone in this has done better, and those who haven't, like young Ms. Panettiere, have plenty of time to do so.

Although this film about a zebra who aspires to win horse races has a marvelous premise, it slows to a mediocre canter right out of the starting gate.

Simultaneously overplotted and simplistic, the new barnyard/racecourse comedy from Warner Brothers is predictable every step of the way, and it contains at least three too many poop jokes.

The film shares a problem with its hero: identity crisis.

The special effects here are surprisingly smooth, and everyone seems to be having fun.

Setting up a race in which you root for the misfit is the 'oldest trick in the book,' to quote a phrase Tucker the horse likes to use in Racing Stripes. But as Tucker adds: 'Works every time.' That it does.

Racing Stripes is hardly a Triple Crown winner. But for a Saturday afternoon with the kids, it's a safe bet.

This is the kind of movie you might grab at the video store, but it's not worth the trip to the theater.

The message comes across loud and clear without being preachy or treacly, the voice work is top-notch and the zebras (they used eight to play the teenage Stripes) beautiful.

It's all familiar and unsurprising, but not without its modest pleasures.

Frisky and funny enough to please pre-teens, but still witty enough to amuse even those parents who don't recognize Dustin Hoffman, Whoopi Goldberg and other notables among the unseen vocal talents.

A predictable but pleasant kids movie.

It stumbles right out of the gate.

There's much to laud in Racing Stripes.

A hackneyed mix of sentimentality and anarchic comedy.

Babe is a family film. Racing Stripes is a children's film.

The results don't come close to duplicating Noonan's charming and gentle barnyard fable [Babe].

Should delight youngsters, although parents likely will find it is sentimental in the extreme, with a plot that telegraphs every development.

Best live-action talking animal movie since Babe.

There's something oddly satisfying about seeing a notoriously disobedient wild animal like a zebra racing alongside horses.

Part earnest, old-fashioned melodrama, part wisecracking broad comedy, Racing Stripes is a film divided against itself.

Racing Stripes never pulls ahead of the pack, but it's good for a few laps around the track.