When I wasn't paying attention to what was actually going on in "Racing Stripes" -- and if you saw it, you wouldn't blame
me -- I spent time marveling at how far the technology of making animals appear to talk has come since "Babe." The animals in "Racing Stripes" talk as if to the manner born. It isn't just their lips that move, but their whole jaws and throats, too. It looks pretty much the way I expect it would look if animals really could talk. But would they say the things they say in this movie? I guess maybe they would; some animals aren't very smart. "Racing Stripes" feels like the films Disney used to make, the ones about mules that kicked field goals, or dogs that practiced law, or lions that developed cold fusion, or whatever. It is about a zebra that wants to run races -- which, when you think about it, isn't exactly an absurd idea, since zebras are related to horses, and horses run races all the time. I mean, it's not like the zebra wants to drive a bus.
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