When farmer Nolan Walsh (Greenwood) is trundling through a Kentucky rainstorm in his pick-up he arrives at a zebra crossing.

Actually, it's not a zebra crossing...but a zebra foal stranded in the middle of the road after being left behind by a travelling circus.

Being a decent sort of cove, Walsh takes the shivering animal back to his farm where his daughter Channing (Panetierre) takes the gangly critter in.

Soon the zebra - or Stripes as he's been christened - is making the acquaintance of his misfit troupe of barnyard neighbours.

There's brusque Shetland pony Tucker (voiced by Dustin Hoffman), wise old goat Franny (Whoopi Goldberg) and mobster pelican Goose (Joe Pantoliano).

However, it's what Stripes discovers next door to the farm - Turfway Racetrack, home of the Kentucky Open - that fires his imagination.

Convinced that he's a racehorse, Stripes is determined to lift the trophy - but he's up against stiff opposition from Turfway's snooty thoroughbreds (according to them, Stripes' father was a horse and his mother a fence).

This is several lengths behind Babe, the 1995 animatronic classic about pig raised by sheepdogs, despite a first rate voice cast and even Sting warbling over the closing credits.

It's all a little bit Little House on the Racecourse, falling at the first to the great American curse of sentimentality delivered straight-faced with a quavering lip.

A couple of funky flies Buzz and Scuzz - voiced by Steve Harvey and David Spade - wing it winningly for the kids with a couple of rap routines and a, erm, manure banquet.

But it's all too routine and even anklebiters will find their patience strained by a plot that would be judged too predictable for the school nativity.

With dead certs like The Incredibles coming up on the rails, it's difficult to see the likes of this first past the post. Lame.

Tim Evans