Is there anything cuter than Babe.
While re-watching Babe I was shocked by the genuine quality of the film. I was expecting to have a enjoyable nostalgic Little Rob. Something that I would like immediately but would probably start the pick-a part as time went on. And honestly that didn't happen.
Babe is legitimately enjoyable and well-made film.
The effects on a talking animals and how they react is fantastically done. Most of it's just the animals running about and doing whatever it is animals do and then superimposing a certain face or expression over the animal and presumably working the story around there actions.
Sometimes they'll use puppets and it's usually done well enough.
There's one scene between Babe and the talking duck that looks a little cheap just because you can really tell how much of a puppet that duck was. But It ultimately doesn't matter and it doesn't look out of place with the rest of the film.
The story is well structured and Incredibly easy to follow. So scene seems to go on for more than 5 to 10 minutes and they're all broken up by little story chapters. Usually with these kind of annoying little singing mice.
It's all pasted and ideally structured with simple but effective dialogue. Doesn't just talk down to you because it's child's movie.
it doesn't even try to cover up the dark undertones. Or really they're just overtones. The dark and Sinister nature of people eating pigs and ducks and other animals isn't hidden at all. Babe grows up in a slaughterhouse and his entire family is now gone. Presumably they make up hamburgers and bacon and all sorts of other meatie products.
It's not like the family that bought him was planning to do anything else. (Although I do have a suspicion the farmer may have found it hard to shoot him in the end. He couldn't even bring himself to shoot the pig when he thought he'd killed one of his sheep. Though I would like to think that was just a part of his brain thinking; ''How in God's name does a pig kill a sheep?'')
The farmer was going to eat him and they were purposely trying to fatten them up. He's just lucky that he had of talent for directing sheep or maybe just the guts to try it.
All the animals just kind of act without trying to question their place in the world. I would call this the complete opposite of Animal Farm. All the animals are perfectly content with their lot in life and most of them aren't even bother that they might end up in a pie one day.
Except for the duck as he seems to realise the folly of this way of life and is doing everything in his power to get away from it. Rather that be replacing the rooster as a wake-up alarm or pretending to be some other type of animal as to avoid the slaughter. At at one point he just flat-out decides to leaves.
I don't really have anything all that much to say about Babe. It's cute, it's easy going it's surprisingly gruesome at some parts and it's strangely timeless.
The farmers live like it's 1934 most of their technology has advanced mostly beyond that point and really the most dated thing about this movie becomes the modern aspects.
Mainly the fax machine and their kids modern car, mixed in with the brattiest grand-children you can imagine.
But even then the movie doesn't pay much of it any mind he wants to get back to focusing on babe talking with a group of sheep and convincing them that they should just walk around for the convenience of the farmer with us they want to get attacked by those blasted wolves.
Can I just say that there's a huge irony and watching a movie like Babe after seeing the Harry Potter films.
Eight films six of which had no idea how to handle their tone. They constantly bounce back and forth between grim-reality and farcical wizardry.
Then Along Comes Babe the seemingly innocent simplistic, not trying to be anything too special of a film and it completely obliterates it and how it handles its tone.
And its overall story. I'm just going to put it out there babe it's a better movie than Harry Potter any of them it's also better than most Star Wars movies, better than most things really.
It also helps you just have a really solid cast. James Cromwell who plays the farmer just comes off as the most sweet and charismatic man.
Roscoe Lee Browne who does the narration is smooth and overall charming. And of course there's Magda Szubanski who plays the farmer's wife. She's silly as all get-out but she's just so darn delightful and fun to watch.
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