MY LOVELY ZEBRA

REVIEWED - RACING STRIPESThere may be critics capable of getting through a review of this passable kids' movie without mentioning Babe, but, sad to relate, I am not among their number. To be fair, though that fine film broke new ground in successfully moving its actors' lips, movies starring talking livestock have been around for so long they probably constitute a genre in themselves. It would thus be unfair to label this half-term diversion as any sort of rip-off.

Racing Stripes, in which a zebra with Frankie Muniz's voice dreams of becoming a racehorse, will probably play well with the I-want-a-pony demographic. There are plenty of celebrity vocal turns - Dustin Hoffman as a Shetland pony, Whoopi Goldberg as a goat, Snoop Dogg as a, well, dog - and Hayden Panettiere, the actress playing the young heroine, has a jolly, well-scrubbed vigour which, though it may revolt members of the Bratz generation, will warm the hearts of parents old enough to have once fallen in love with Hayley Mills.

Stripes, the perky equine mammal in question, is discovered, confined in a small cage, by widowed farmer Bruce Greenwood while driving through a rainy, Kentucky evening. Bruce and his daughter, who, deeply puzzled by their find, are clearly too thick to realise that the beast must belong to some sort of travelling menagerie, bring Stripes back to their farm and proceed to raise him among their community of chatty domestic animals. Though our hero is clearly different to the stallions and mares about him - stripier, smaller - he decides that, with young Hayden on his back, he will triumph at a great race which, lawyers in charge of licensing issues having had their say, is not quite called the Kentucky Derby. The usual lessons about living your dream gradually ooze their way out.

The film is, technically speaking, carried off well enough - the computer animated sequences are fluid and zebras have rarely been ridden with greater conviction - but no child who has watched a film before will be surprised by any of the plot's sickeningly inevitable turns. More politically correct youths may, however, enjoy getting worked up at the fact that the zebra is not voiced by an African-American actor.