Babe Review

I've never seen this movie before. I thought you've seen Babe: Pig in the City. THAT WAS CLEARLY A JOKE BUGGNUTZ. Anyway, for the summer we show kids movies, and I specifically wanted to see this movie for a couple reasons. For one, George Miller has kinda become a writer I've been paying attention to lately since he wrote and directed pretty much all the Mad Max movies, a trend I've only just jumped on. And two, The Exorcism was so bad I want to review a movie about a talking pig, and if any of you make fun of me I'll start crying.

What's The Movie About?

Babe is a young pig trying to understand and find his place in the world while working as a sheep herder on a farm. 

What I Like.

I really like the message this movie has: Challenge your place in the world, but don't become an asshole. Babe is a great character, and I really like Fly, Rex, and Ferdinand. I kinda liked Farmer Hoggett too, but I think I mostly liked the detail of him being way to tall for his house. The puppets and lip moving of the animals is pretty good, and I weirdly like the farm set a lot. The script is pretty tight. There's a couple things that happen that don't really connect to anything, but this is a kids movie so I'm giving it a pass in the like two instances of things that could have been cut. I really like the worldbuilding. The idea of the farm animals thinking that the only animals that get eaten are the ones who don't have a job to do on the farm is a really interesting inversion of the truth. My final point is I didn't realize how dark this movie was gonna get, and not to lie, I loved it. Babe's got some teeth, especially for kids. They do not hide the fact that some of the cute animals are getting killed, hell there is even a bloody death scene. Babe, the movie about a pig with the voice of a sweet six-year-old, has the line "Christmas means carnage!" screamed by a paranoid duck. My vegan mother probably should have shown me this movie as a kid to convert me. The darkness along with the animals seeming to have their own cultures as individual species makes me think this is the same universe as Watership Down.

What I Didn't Like.

There was a just a couple things that kinda annoyed me, but nothing too bad. The first were the mice. I liked that they read the various title cards of movie, I think that's a good element for the kids who can't read. But everything in the movie they do is somewhat obnoxious. Same with the farmer's wife. I think it is because everyone has a ridiculous voice, and while it works for the various animals, I don't think it works for the farmer's wife. 

Final Summation.

Babe is badass, and I love it. It's going on my Mount Rushmore of movies everyone should watch as a kid, along with Coraline, Wall-E, and Kung-Fu Panda. Guess I need to watch the sequel now.