Day 109 - 4/19/09 - Movie #107
BEFORE: This is the 2006 live-action/CGI version, I watched the cel-animated film many times when I was a kid, so the story is very familiar. I'm curious to see if the remake was justified, but I'll have to break my long-standing ban on Dakota Fanning movies to find out.
THE PLOT: Wilbur the pig is scared because he knows that come Christmas, he will end up on the dinner table. He hatches a plan with Charlotte, a spider that lives in his pen, to ensure that this will never happen.
AFTER: On a technical level, the film works very well - the puppeteering and animation is very good. I spend a fair amount of time at work researching commercials with animated characters, so I've seen a lot of "talking animal" ads. From the end credits, it looks like a bunch of familiar (to me, anyway) companies worked on this - Stan Winston Studios, Phil Tippett Studios, Rhythm & Hues...and it seems each company only handled 1 or 2 different animals - interesting... I can't fault the voice-work either - if you need to replace Paul Lynde as the voice of Templeton the Rat, you couldn't do much better than Steve Buscemi. Lots of other big names here, like Julia Roberts, Oprah, Robert Redford, John Cleese, Kathy Bates...most worked well, except Julia Roberts' voice was maybe TOO soft and silky for a spider.
My main problem was the message, though - we all know where our meat comes from, and we all can assume that farms can be brutal places. It would be great if we could only eat animals after they all had long, happy lives and died of old age, but that's not reality. It's unrealistic to think that you can somehow save the world by sparing the life of one small pig. All Fern really did was to make her little corner of the world more comfortable for HER, in a somewhat selfish way, because she didn't want to see a runt die. Sure, it's noble to want to save all animals everywhere, but it's not practical. What happened to Wilbur's 10 siblings? They deserved to be eaten, and he didn't? I almost wish that the movie had taken a harder stance against meat, and Fern could have been portrayed more like Lisa Simpson - an results-oriented activist would be easier to deal with than a starry-eyed idealist.
My other quibble is with the music - you know those Danny Elfman scores in Tim Burton movies, where something magical happens, and the music swells to emphasize it? Well, this movie uses JUST those Danny Elfman swells, for what seems like the majority of the film, which ends up making the magical moments less special. Take a tip from American Idol contestants - start soft, and then crescendo...the Sarah McLachlan song in the end credits has the same problem - her voice breaks on EVERY syllable, so it's not special, it's just annoying.
RATING: 5 out of 10 goose eggs
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