RALLY ROAD RACERS - Mark Reviews Movies

Rally Road Racers, Viva Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 11, 2023

There's a bit of style to Rally Road Racers, although that's mainly when the movie focuses upon the act suggested by the title. The movie opens with scenes of a cross-country car race across the Australian Outback, where 3-D animated vehicles speed over some impossibly sun-kissed desert, which seems to glow an almost neon-like red from the light and the heat. It's a striking bit of imagery, especially in how the backdrops, which exist mostly to express the concept of the terrain instead of offering a photorealistic representation, and the more realistic car models co-exist despite being so contradictory in nature.

The movie comes from writer/director Ross Venokur and the team of artists at Vanguard Animation, an independent studio. Those opening moments make such an impression that it feels as if the filmmakers are on to something new and different with this world and tale, but once the story gets in motion, the movie struggles to find an identity of its own.

That story revolves around the sport of rally racing in a world populated by anthropomorphic animals. The setup isn't unique by any stretch of the imagination, of course, but that doesn't matter. It's all about how Venokur and the animation team approach the concept.

Unfortunately, it's entirely formulaic. We meet Zhi (voice of Jimmy O. Yang), a slow loris living in a small village where life moves, well, slowly. He's all about speed, though, as a fan of race cars and especially the racer Archie Vainglorious (voice of John Cleese), a toad who wins that Australian rally and inspires Zhi to cause some havoc with a speeding tricycle at a festival in town.

Upon growing up, Zhi, an orphan being raised by his grandma Bai (voice of Lisa Lu), has dreams of becoming a professional racecar driver, but he has a problem of losing confidence and control whenever he's in the lead. Zhi is going to have to become better quick, though, because his grandma's house and, indeed, the entire village suddenly come under threat from a real estate company that wants to demolish the place to build condos. By the way, one of the executives of the dastardly developers is Zhi's racing hero Archie, who agrees to put a stop to the company's plans if the slow loris can beat him in an upcoming rally across China.

All of the setup—including Zhi gaining a coach in goat Gnash (voice of J.K. Simmons) and going through a training montage—happens in an admirably promising rush. The move is worth admiring because it bypasses much of the formulaic narrative the premise might have us expecting. It's full of promise because the screenplay gets right to the racing—the element that the movie already has shown us it can pull off with such a sense of energy and style.

The racing sequences are exciting and varied here, with eclectic vehicles—Zhi's muscle car with an off-balance undercarriage, a monster of a monster truck, a robot housing tanks for a couple of seahorse pilots—that hint at how potentially wacky these races could be. The backdrops for each stretch of the four-day-long race vary, too, from the desert, to the Stone Forest, and to the winding and looping highways of Shanghai. One segment doesn't simply rest on pulling a famous '80s tune for the soundtrack and turns a section of the race into a hand-drawn homage to the song's almost-as-famous music video.

There's some notable imagination here, but that can't be said of the plot, which is simplistic but somehow still overwhelms the action, or the characters. Most of the former has Archie trying to sabotage Zhi's efforts, although there's the complication of a double agent and Zhi's budding romance with fellow slow loris Shelby (voice of Chloe Bennet), who may or may not be the first part of the description, as well.

As for the characters, there's simply a sense of personality missing from them, particularly within the context of such over-the-top vehicles and action. They have their quirks, to be sure, such as Gnash's ability to transform items by chewing on them and Archie's little sycophantic minions who echo his every sentiment. Any kind of characterization for the other racers, though, is mostly non-existent (The seahorses get some biological schtick involving the male partner being pregnant), and the most that can be said of Zhi is that he exists as the dull, familiar protagonist of a dull and familiar plot.

Rally Road Racers is at its most effective when the filmmakers embrace some firm sense of style, either in its scenes of dynamic motion along various terrains or in finding the opportunities for humor that's specific to this world. Ultimately, though, the filmmakers seem to rest on the comfort of the familiar, instead of looking for the silly and stylish elements that could set their material apart from the predictable safety of the pack.

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