WHEN is the star of a technicolour movie filmed in black and white? When it's a zebra, of course, and in this particular case, the Stripes of the title is a zebra who thinks he is a racehorse.

Racing Stripes comes from the same anthropomorphic stable that made Babe, and so here is another comic family adventure featuring trite, wise-cracking animals, birds and horse flies that talk with the aid of computer-generated animation.

Stripes is first encountered as a shivering foal, accidentally left behind by a travelling circus speeding out of town in the mother of all Kentucky rainstorms. Horse farmer and former champion trainer Nolan Walsh (Bruce Greenwood) spots him in a box in the road and takes him home to share his ramshackle, old-fashioned barn with a batty rooster (voiced by Jeff Foxworthy), phlegmatic goat (Whoopi Goldberg) and grumpy Shetland pony, Tucker (Dustin Hoffman).

Widower father gives in to only daughter Channing (Hayden Panettiere) adopting young Stripes as a pet, and soon the inseparable duo nurture the most unlikely of dreams. In honour of her late mother, young jockey Channing wants to ride the winner in the Kentucky Open, and crazy as it may seem, Stripes (Frankie Muniz) could just be her winning ticket.

Living next door to the thoroughbreds on the Dalrymple Estate, Stripes has deluded himself that he too is a racehorse, never mind the mockery of the haughty equines, who dismiss him as too short, too squat, too zebra.

Stripes, however, has a turn of hoof and a tough streak that mark him out as a winner, not least in the eyes of Tucker, who has been the wise voice in the corner for many a classic winner.

Having lost his wife, Nolan is cautious about letting Channing loose on the track, but the old competitive spirit re-surfaces when he is riled by the ruthless queen bee of the Kentucky track, Clara Dalrymple (Wendie Malick), his former employer. The race is on, and here comes Seabiscuit in zebra form.

Director Frederik Du Chau and screenwriter David F Schmidt keep the comic drama largely light and perky, if a furlong too long, throwing in a pair of all singing, all-dancing horseflies, Buzz (Steve Harvey) and Scuzz (David Spade), for scatological jokes and a beautiful filly, Sandy (Mandy Moore) for romance for Stripes.

Never remotely original but efficient and enjoyable, Racing Stripes is exactly what you expect when Seabiscuit meets Babe.

Updated: 15:09 Thursday, February 03, 2005