Rally Road Racers Parent Guide

Rally Road Racers (formerly titled “Silk Road Rally”) is a family friendly, innocuous cartoon that your kids will probably enjoy, and you won’t hate. It follows the story of a slow loris (a small animal related to monkeys) named Zhi (Jimmy O. Yang) on a quest to become the best racer in the world. Living with his Grannie in the slow loris village, Zhi doesn’t quite fit in, and seems never has. When his idol, a turtle who is the fastest racer in the world, Archi Vainglorious (John Cleese) comes to his town to buy and bulldoze Zhi’s home, an agreement is struck. If Zhi wins the Silk Road Rally, the deed to Grannie’s home is his. But if he loses, he becomes the face of the new development Vainglorious plans to build.

Of course, Vainglorious plays dirty, and of course, many lessons are learned on the way. Maybe too many lessons: be true to yourself, find your Dao (path), focus on what matters most, winners are always wining even when they’re losing, together there’s nothing we can’t do, appearance is an illusion, come from behind, never giving up, slowing down to see things clearly – I honestly didn’t know which lesson was going to be the wrap up, because there were so many to choose from, and several came back around.

Though at times quite didactic, the enjoyment of seeing all these slow animals be considered the fastest racers in the world is a nice touch. I also think wide reception of this movie would lead greater interest and preservation of slow lorises (which we always applaud). There are not a lot of surprise twists in this story, except perhaps some truly physics-defying driving, but hey, we can cut a lot of slack for an inoffensive cartoon with uplifting messages. It does feel like a Zootopia/Kung Fu Panda/Cars mashup. So if your kids are into any of those movies, this will probably play well with them.