Don’t worry, my “allergies” acted up a bit during the original myself. Damn that hayfever! 
I adore Babe 2: Pig In The City beyond all reasoning! It’s a wonderful, wonderful movie. To this day I have a very soft spot in my heart for Gene Siskel, who picked Babe 2 as the best movie of its year (whatever year that was). He got a lot of shit for that, but he was right. If it wasn’t actually the best, it was close to it anyway. In any case, I admired his nerve for calling it that.
It’s very dark and surreal and bizarre though, quite unlike the original Babe. It’s the perfect kids movie for people who love movies like Brazil, City of Lost Children, 12 Monkeys, Dark City, Mirrormask, Delicatessen and other movies of that ilk. It’s the kids movie for weird people. How could I not love it dearly? It’s why I love Return to Oz too.
DrDeth, of course Dakota screamed in WOTW. Her character, who was, after all, just a little girl, just went from having a nice, fairly normal life with a flaky dad to being menaced by deadly aliens that were killing people, destroying everything and wanted to fry her and her family. You’d scream like a little girl too if you were there in that situation. I don’t recall Dakota screaming in any of her other movies, because the script didn’t call for it. To hate an actor for doing what the script called for is pretty silly. That’s like hating R. Lee Ermey for being a yelling bastard in Full Metal Jacket.“man I can’t stand that guy, he did nothing but yell at people in that one movie”
What everybody who expressed affinity for Babe: Pig in the City said.
Ooops, I missed this the first time around, until kaylasdad99 (are there 98 other kaylasdads?) indicated that someone else talked up Babe 2. You’re talking about Babe: Pig In The City, not the animated Charlotte’s Web (my brain, it doesn’t work sometimes). Yeah!
Yep. I actually didn’t care for the animated Charlotte’s Web. I thought it was irritating a cutesy. The book actually dealt with death in a good way without whitewashing it. There was always the threat of pork chops hanging over Wilbur’s head. And, y’know, the ending and all. The movie was stupid cavorting rats and farmstock. I loathe animated cavorting.
The new Charlotte’s Web actually looks a lot better than the animated one, but I know I won’t convince my family to see it in the theater, and my husband has this annoying habit of overcontrolling the Netflix queue, but I’ll get to it sooner or later. It’s just not an ooh-gotta see it for me.
Pan’s Labyrinth, on the other hand…
No…
Speaking as a marketing type, this is an attempt to capitalize one the success of TLOTR and, more recently, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. Looks like some movers and shakers noticed that making beloved kids books into good movies and pulling out all the stops to enact the settings is a winner.
Hell, both Lady Chance and I broke down crying just watching the TRAILER of TLTWATW.
I know someone here will know, but what is the music that plays in the trailer near the beginning, starting when the girl wakes up in bed? It almost sounds like the theme from the final scene of “The Usual Suspects” but I’m not sure if that’s right. I know I’ve heard it before and it’s bugging me that I can’t place it.
The biggest problem I see in the trailers is that Charlotte doesn’t feel like a character. Most of the scenes they show with her, you see a tiny spider webbing across the barn, with a voice coming from nowhere. You just don’t get the feel of the voice being associated with the spider. This is lessened somewhat in the extreme close-ups, but even there, watching a spider move her mandibles is very different from watching an animal with lips “talking”. And, of course, a spider-scale closeup means that you can’t get any of the other characters on screen with her.
And I’m a bit worried about the star-studded cast, too, since movies with so many stars often don’t have anything else going for them. But I’m willing to wait and see, on that.
Oh, thank God, I won’t be the only one in the theatre!
That’ll make 3 of us. I can’t wait!
For Pan’s Labyrinth, to be clear. WhyNot, Kythereia and I will be looking around, wondering where everybody else is. It does look stunning.
Btw, was I the only person who saw Mirrormask? As a movie (story-wise) I’d give it a B+, but for the most awe-inspiring visuals in a film, I give it an A+. It’s breathtaking, one of the most visually imaginative movies I’ve seen in my life. The small screen will NOT do it justice, but seeing it there is better than not seeing it at all.
I did like Babe and Babe2, but they worked with that style because of the dark wierdness. Charlottes web was probably much better as an animated feature, this looks really lame. Steve Buchemi used to be so cool.
I really wish that I could go see this movie, because I adored the book as a child. But making it a real spider means that I will never be able to watch it without extensive psychotherapy sessions to prepare me (or help me recover, depending). Sure it’s supposed to be a teeny spider, but to me it’ll be bloody Shelob coming at me from the screen.