Is 'Babe' really worth all the hoopla?

By Tim Grierson
Staff Writer

"`Babe?!" It's a movie about a pig," a friend said to me.
"Yes, but it's a movie about a pig that a lot of audiences and critics have liked," I tell him. "Kenneth Turan, the Los Angeles Times' head film critic picked it as best film of the year, and the National Society of Film Critics did the same. It's up for Golden Globe for Best Musical/Comedy."
He still won't hear a word of it. It's a movie about a pig, and that's that.
This too was my feeling about "Babe" when it came out this summer, I must admit. The trailer had me fearing the worst. Cute mice singing in helium voices, and barnyard animals running amuck and doing adorable things. Oh God, I thought, wasn't "Gordy" bad enough? Sure, it might be charming that the animals could talk, but sitting in a theater watching swine converse didn't exactly captivate me.
But then the reviews came in. Almost across-the-board praise usually tempered with a disclaimer sentence near the beginning along the lines of "Yes, I know this is a movie about a talking pig and I know I'm a cynical, cultured critic who shouldn't really go in for these sorts of things, but man did I love it!"
Seeing it a few weeks after its release, I found "Babe" to be a charming little movie. I imagined co-creator George "Mad Max" Miller around a table with his colleagues laughing and thinking up this idea for a film.
Here we have story about an orphaned pig who comes under the protection of an eccentric old farmer and his animal subculture with it's own set of leaders and followers and hangers-on. Dubbed Babe, the pig wants to find a purpose. Since he doesn't realize what his function on the farm is (namely: food), he decides he wants to emulate his adopted sheep dog mother.
The film concludes with the farmer entering Babe in a sheep dog competition which he eventually wins, despite initial taunts and laughs that the old man has finally gone off his rocker.
Back this summer, I thought the movie was funny, charming and a lot better than I thought it would be. Still, I felt it peaked too early and eventually, the inspiration began to run short until we got to the ending.
So I forgot about the movie, recommended it to people if they asked, but didn't give it much thought.
Then came the end-of-the-year lists. "Babe" had left an impression on people, and the National Society of Film Critics' recognition was the most prestigious notice of the bunch.
So even though I defended the film to my friend who seemed to have fundamental difficulties with it, I had to acknowledge that I, too, did not know what the big deal was.
I had to see it again. Fortunately, movie studios know how we think and conveniently re-released the film to allow the curious and the faithful to see "Babe" one more time.
Watching an afternoon showing, I was hoping that maybe I just wasn't in the proper mood to enjoy the film to the fullest last time. Who knows, maybe a subsequent viewing would make me see what I had missed the first time. If this is such a great picture, I didn't want to let it slip by again without a second look.
Well, I enjoyed it more this second time almost six months after I first viewed it, but I still have to say that the film's appeal is still somewhat elusive. Yes, I enjoyed it and I had a good time seeing it again and remembering the funny segments I had forgotten, but there has always been something about the film that hasn't sat right with me. Seeing it again, it's really the tone of "Babe" that feels off, that doesn't make it as great an experience as it probably could be.
First off, the movie isn't as funny as its praise would indicate. Both times watching it, the best sequence in the film is too early on; it's the moment when Babe breaks with the rules and enters the farmer's house to get rid of the alarm clock that has replaced the insidious duck's job as farm rooster. Director Chris Noonan plays it at just the right pace as laughs keep building up. It is, however, the last really funny moment in the movie, as nothing that follows can top it.
There's also the issue of the world the filmmakers have constructed. It's stunning visually as it feels wholly removed from our realm (if it wasn't for a fax machine that's given as a Christmas gift, you'd be convinced the film was set in the past).
But the film tends to shift too much toward caricature as it winds down. There's too much time wasted with the farmer's visiting adult children and his relationship with his wife who becomes more irritating of a portrayal as the film nears completion. The only human character who stays consistent is the farmer which helps develop one of "Babe"'s most glorious scenes when he dances around the room unabashedly to help his poor sick pig feel better. It's a moment of pure joy between this pig and strange man who both never fit in to the world around them. No one else in the film is as interesting as these two, and it hurts "Babe" that too many characters feel more one-note than really though out.
Actually, it's funny to draw comparisons between "Babe" and "Mad Max" since that was the problem with those Mel Gibson pictures as well. Sure, they were as fun as any movie of its kind, but the world's were so cartoonish that nothing real or human ever seemed to be happening in them. Now with "Babe," Miller and Noonan and the others have gone and done the same thing: a fantasy world so remote from reality that it's hard to really get a bearing on anything.
As for the special effects of "Babe," the best compliment to be given is to say that they're so effective that after awhile you forget, "oh yeah, pigs and dogs are talking in this film." Noonan doesn't waste time calling attention to his effects. He lets his world of thinking, sentient animals simply be. It's unfortunate that his sense of atmosphere at times becomes jarring--even the harsher moments of the film such as Babe's removal from his pig family and the viscious killing of one of the sheep feel a little too whimsical. For Noonan, a first-time director, "Babe" is a promising, if not completly successful, debut.
After my second screening, "Babe" surprsied the Hollywood community again, beating out "Toy Story" among others for the Golden Globe. On one hand, it's good to see a film like "Babe" win because it sends a message that children's films shouldn't be marginalized and do have an audience if they're creative enough. However, there's at least three other kids movies which did a better job last year of melding a childlike fantasy world with a resonate story: "A Little Princess," "The City of Lost Children" and most especially, "Toy Story." Though not the best of the bunch, the success of "Babe"--financially, creatively and critically--is Hollywood moving in the right direction.