Today is the day to wonder if there is such a thing as a lovely and practical snow boot.
Steve D. is taking a much-deserved break for a while, probably to fashion himself a fancy new tinfoil hat for the new year. I thought I'd roll out a new Thurdsay feature that I'll be calling the "Book By Its Cover Reviews," wherein I review a film, show, movie, person, trend, you name it without actually doing much research or even reading/watching/seeing the thing at hand. See, it's all about ignorant judgment calls. I just am able to slap a cute term on it and put it online and it's suddenly 'clever.'
Book By Its Cover Review: "Racing Stripes"
Coming to a theater near you on January 14th comes the funniest humanized animal movie since "Kangaroo Jack," and the best wry look at the hilarity of horse racing since "Hot to Trot." But can this new installment possibly beat the one-two punch of Bobcat Goldthwait, Dabney Coleman and John Candy as the voice of the talking horse in the 1988 masterpiece? It can, with a whip!
Nothing is as preposterously, pants-wettingly hilarious as the
concept of a zebra racing horses. Can you imagine? One has stripes, the other
does not.
We've seen the talking horse and talking mule theme before, but in this new twist, Frankie Muniz takes the reins (oh my god, that was hilarious.) Fine; he's still a young actor, he has to pay his dues. In the cast are some little-heard names playing the mane (oh god!!) human characters, but scroll down the cast list on ye olde imdb.com. Why, there's Wendie Malick and Michael Clark Duncan. OK, maybe they need work. David Spade and Snoop Dogg. Nobody ever accused them of taking discriminating roles. But wait. Dustin Hoffman? Whoopi Goldberg? Toss that in with a little bit of Steve Harvey, Jeff Foxworthy and Joshua Jackson, and what do we have?
I don't know exactly, but it looks like crap, no? I'd also like to get our gossip columnists on the job figuring out what Mr. Hoffman has done lately to deserve being in this and "Meet the Fockers". Maybe he felt that he wanted to more completely round out his legacy as an actor.
Anyway, will Stripes the hilarious zebra win the race in the end or possible become lame, get 'destroyed' and turned into glue? I think you might have to go see it to find out.
PS-Keep an eye out in the future for a rebuttal review when my father sees this movie on an airplane and proclaims it 'pretty good'.