Starring Bruce Greenwood and Hayden Panettiere. Rated general.

An earnest attempt to fuse the sentimental talking-animal, heartwarming family-drama, and "Oh, shit, another David Spade vehicle" genres, Racing Stripes recalls the old Saturday Night Live commercial about the product that is both floor wax and dessert topping. Roughly half of the movie is live-action in which a horse-crazy girl (Hayden Panettiere) in Kentucky--actually Pietermaritzburg, South Africa--learns to ride the tame zebra rescued years earlier by her father (Bruce Greenwood). It's a bonding experience that helps them heal the mental scars from mom's fatal racing accident. The film cuts between the human melodrama and computer-assisted animal banter: Frankie Muniz is the voice of the plucky zebra; David Spade and Steve Harvey speak as a couple of dancing flies; Whoopie Goldberg is a compassionate talking goat; Jeff Foxworthy plays a dull-witted rooster; Joe Pantoliano is a wisecracking New Jersey pelican hiding out from the mob; Joshua Jackson is... No, let's go back to Joe Pantoliano. I have to write that again.

Joe Pantoliano is a wisecracking New Jersey pelican hiding out from the mob.

His story is, he is a "hit man"--he poops on people (great whirling bolos of amazingly realistic viscosity; they really know their prop feces in Pietermaritzburg). After a botched job, he was forced to take refuge in the sticks.

Implied is a notion that organized crime in New Jersey is dependent on pelicans. I find this thesis to be disturbing. The linkages between gangsters and aquatic waterfowl could also be significant in Vancouver, with our coastal setting. Who knows what is really going on with seagulls? Or the geese? Geese have always had an attitude...

Anyway, the story goes back and forth like that. We see father and daughter fighting over the idea of racing their pet zebra, then we go, "Oh, wow, Snoop Dogg is playing a dog!" We get the father's slow realization that he is losing his daughter to overcaution in the present, just as he has lost his professional standing as a race trainer to grief in the past. Then, "Oh, my God, there's a full-on parody of the underground racing circuit, with talking horses instead of Honda Civics, and how did they get Mandy Moore to be the voice of the white show jumper?"

The list of recognizable voice-over names is so enormous--they have both Bryan Adams and Sting contributing sucky ballads--that you have to admire the producers, Alcon Entertainment. The audience need not endure journeymen voice actors reciting the insipid dialogue--we've got Dustin Hoffman and Michael Clarke Duncan! It's more star value to the consumer.

Both the animation and live-action segments are prettily directed by Frederik Du Chau. Though all characters converge for the climactic big race, the film remains a thing divided. The different worlds are in wildly different moods; the CG segments are so screechingly frantic compared to the subdued, realistic work of Greenwood and Panettiere that it's hard to find a nexus between human and animal as there was in Babe, Racing Stripes' obvious model.

Then again, as any parent who has watched their offspring mix slushies knows, kids love weird combinations. Bill Griffith's Zippy the Pinhead has long thrived on the combination of Ding Dongs and taco sauce. It's possible--likely, even--that your kids will love this movie. And that's two whole hours of having to interact with them otherwise.