Title: The Art of Racing in the Rain
MPAA Rating: PG
Director: Simon Curtis
Starring: Kevin Costner, Milo Ventimiglia, Amanda Seyfried
Runtime: 1 hr 49 mins

What It Is: Denny (Ventimiglia) is an aspiring Formula One driver with plenty of skill and experience. When he finds a farmer with a litter of puppies he takes home one of them and names it Enzo (Costner) named after Ferrari founder Enzo Ferrari. Now we are in their lives and get to see their day to day including getting to meet the love of Denny’s life (and future wife) Eve (Seyfried). We get to live with Denny and his family through Enzo. A beloved family dog.

What We Think: Sometimes it’s nice to just watch a good PG film with the family. This ain’t it. No THIS is manipulative dribble written for the bleeding heart crowd. Chock full of sappy and saccharine nonsense. So far up it’s own posterior, it can excavate the feces with which this script was written. I mean COME ON! We can do so much better than this. It fails to deliver anything but moments that make you want to cry. For two reasons. First the dialogue is vomitous and secondly it throws all of the sad stuff at you all at once. Milo Ventimiglia is becoming “cry dad” in that if he’s in something I assume two things. One it will try to make me cry and two he will be a dad.

Our Grade: D-, So what’s keeping this from failing? It is an absolutely harmless piece of PG sugar. If its intentions were anything but sincere this would’ve failed. Note to filmmakers do NOT make your narrator the dog. Don’t do it! I can’t recommend this one that even as a joke because it isn’t funny. It’s sad but not in the way it wants to be.