The Art of Racing in the Rain (2019)
Directed by Simon Curtis
No — The Art of Racing in the Rain is not woke, scoring 2 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
The Art of Racing in the Rain arrives with a golden retriever narrator, a philosopher's soul in a body that cannot operate a clutch, and a mandate to make grown adults weep in a darkened theater.
Consciousness Markers
The film is sentimental and didactic about life lessons and racing metaphors, but its moralizing is personal-inspirational rather than progressive social lecture.
The cast is predominantly white, with Black actors only in incidental supporting roles; the film makes no explicit or implicit point about representation or diverse casting.
No LGBTQ+ characters, relationships, or themes appear; the narrative is a heterosexual romance and family drama.
Female characters are defined primarily through wife and mother roles in support of the male protagonist; there is no feminist critique or gender-equity messaging.
Race is never addressed or thematically explored; the story is a dog's-eye family melodrama set in a largely white milieu.
No environmental or climate themes appear; racing and family concerns dominate the narrative.
No critique of wealth, corporations, or capitalism is present; the racing industry and corporate teams are presented as aspirational.
No body-image or body-acceptance themes appear; the only physical focus is the dog's aging and illness.
No neurodivergent characters or themes appear; Enzo's philosophical narration is framed as a dog's soul, not a neurological condition.
The film is a contemporary fictional adaptation, not a historical narrative, and offers no revisionist historical claims.
Why it received this score
The Art of Racing in the Rain arrives with a golden retriever narrator, a philosopher's soul in a body that cannot operate a clutch, and a mandate to make grown adults weep in a darkened theater. It fulfills that mandate with pit-crew efficiency. The film has no interest in the social questions that preoccupied the culture in 2019. Its cast is white. Its milieu is Seattle and the racing paddock. Its moral universe is a father's love for his daughter and a dog's love for both of them.
The plot is a machine for manufacturing grief, and it misses no shift: brain cancer, a custody battle, an assault charge, a dog struck by a car, a settlement signed in exhaustion. The villain is a wealthy father-in-law with a mansion and a lawyer, which a more agitated film might have framed as a class indictment. This one frames him as a bad dad. The racing world is presented as aspirational, with Team Penske and Scuderia Ferrari standing as the summit of human striving. Enzo's narration dispenses lessons about racing lines, rain, and the limits of control, and the film delivers them with the soft insistence of a greeting card. The instruction is to persevere, to forgive, to drive through the weather. The structures surrounding Denny, the sponsorship economy, the courts, the in-laws, are simply more weather.
A dog who hopes to be reincarnated as a man is a fine premise for a tearjerker and a poor vehicle for historical revision, and the film attempts none. It is a contemporary adaptation of a novel, not a true story, and it carries no argument about the past. Women here exist as wife, mother, and daughter, defined entirely by their relationship to the driver and his dog. The one Black performer of note appears in a supporting capacity and signifies nothing. Sentiment remains, competently administered, alongside a mild sermon about perseverance that belongs on the self-help shelf, not the barricade. In the ledger of contemporary cultural markers, this film buries no one and challenges nothing. It just wants you to cry.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Synopsis
A family dog – with a near-human soul and a philosopher's mind – evaluates his life through the lessons learned by his human owner, a race-car driver.
Questions about The Art of Racing in the Rain
Is The Art of Racing in the Rain woke?
No — The Art of Racing in the Rain is not woke, scoring 2 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Ultra Based.
Does The Art of Racing in the Rain have any woke elements?
Very few. None of the 10 markers reaches 30, the level where a marker counts as present; the highest is Lecture Energy at 10.
How does The Art of Racing in the Rain compare to other 2019 movies?
It ranks #264 of the 284 films from 2019 we've scored; their average is 22. The wokest is Black Christmas (79).
How is the Woke Score calculated?
An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.