Babe

When looking through the list of the greatest films of all time there are some really heavy hitters there: Lawrence of Arabia, Citizen Kane, Gandhi, The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur, Casablanca, The Godfather, and…Babe? When compiling a complete list of all the Academy Award nominated Best Pictures the one that stood out the most was this anthropomorphic barnyard tale of a pig that wants to be a sheep dog. In a year with some really tremendous films that didn’t get the nomination, what made this children’s movie stand out above them and get seven Academy Award nominations in 1996? Going one step further: looking back at it nearly thirty years later, does it deserve all that praise or was it all just a matter of good marketing and some trendy moralizing stringing it along into awards season? 

The film begins with newly orphaned piglet Babe (voiced by the late Christine Cavanaugh) being offered up in a “guess the weight” contest at a county fair. Arthur Hoggett (James Cromwell) wins Babe and takes him home with the intention of fattening him up for Christmas dinner. Babe is taken in by Border Collie Fly (Miriam Margolyes), her mate Rex (Hugo Weaving), and their pups. He also makes friends with a neurotic duck named Ferdinand (Danny Mann) who wants to be a rooster and an elder ewe named Maa (Miriam Flynn). Babe feels left out, though, as the other animals on the farm have a purpose but all he is there for is to eat and get fat. All that changes when Arthur notices that Babe seems to have a natural inclination towards separating the chickens into their different colors, giving him a crazy idea that this pig may just make a good sheep dog.

The next day he takes Babe along with Fly and Rex to herd the ewes. At first Babe tries to emulate the sheepdogs, using aggressive tactics to get them to obey but this is met with laughter and ridicule from the haughty ewes. It isn’t until he tries simply talking to them that they follow along, much to the amazement of Arthur and anger from Rex who sees this as an affront to his position and species. That evening Rex and Fly get in an argument over it that turns violent and when Arthur tries to separate them he gets bit forcing him to chain up and muzzle Rex. Arthur enters Babe in the annual sheep herding competition and, after arguing with the judges over allowing a pig to compete, gets Babe a spot in the competition. The only problem is, the sheep Babe will be herding are unfamiliar with the pig and less willing to cooperate.

Babe is definitely a children’s movie. It’s marketed that way with anthropomorphic animals brought to life through a combination of live animals and animatronics from Rhythm & Hues and Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. Filmmakers George Miller and Chris Noonan snuck into this a narrative, though, that is pretty dark for young children and definitely carries with it an agenda. From the opening scene we are treated to the harsh realities of animal life, specifically those slated for the slaughterhouse. Later, when Babe is given to the Hoggett’s, Mrs. Hoggett (Magda Szubanski) thinks only of fattening him up for pork chops, bacon, ham and any other cut of pork she can get out of him. There are close-up shots of meat hooks, knives being sharpened, and an actual scene of a duck being killed and eaten for Christmas dinner. All of this is there to push a narrative on impressionable young children to turn away from eating meat and embrace vegetarianism instead. The message was so heavily pushed that when the film released initially there was a dramatic growth in the vegetarian movement including by lead actor James Cromwell. 

If you can get past the social moralizing there is a cute little story here. The second half of the movie is where it finally shifts back into story mode and away from most of the sermonizing. This is where Babe finds his purpose and escapes the greedy clutches of Mrs. Haggett. The film stops focusing so much on eating meat but it can’t quite resist delving into animal cruelty, too. Rex gets chained up after biting Arthur, then muzzled and given injections to keep him calm. A pack of dogs gets into the ewe enclosure and kills Maa violently and on camera. Babe takes the blame and is nearly gunned down in cold blood by Arthur. This is in a film ostensibly marketed to families with young children, mind you. Going into this film thinking it’ll be more like Charlotte’s Web could leave some kids, especially the overly sensitive ones, in tears. 

This is an adaptation of the Dick King-Smith’s 1983 novel The Sheep-Pig. While the film is a faithful adaptation of that novel there is a key change. In that book it is Mrs. Hoggett who changes her mind about eating Babe. This happens right after some rustlers attempt to steal the Hoggett’s ewes. In the film she is very much downplayed, getting no character arc whatsoever. When Arthur spares Babe and kills a goose for Christmas instead she acts upset over this. Later, when he’s training Babe to herd sheep she is antagonistic about the whole thing, rolling her eyes over what a fool of a husband she has. This attitude lasts all the way to the finale when she is so embarrassed by Arthur’s use of Babe in the herding competition that she tries to prevent her friends from seeing it on the TV, outright fainting from humiliation at one point. Her character is so ill used in this film, especially when she was such an important factor in the book.

Looking back on Babe as a film I really struggle with it. I don’t see it as one of the five best films of 1995 and don’t believe it deserves all the acclaim it has. It’s fine and there’s plenty of good stuff here but the tone is all over the place and it delves into topics a little too dark for the young ones. Scenes transition from disturbing to silly with the flash of a chapter card, narrated by some squeaky mice that sound like they’re trying out for the Alvin and the Chipmunks movie. Apparently the title cards, meant to evoke the novel’s structure, were confusing for kids too young to read so the voice-overs were added later. This would be fine if the film’s whole tone kept those young ones in mind but that’s not the case. I really wanted to like this film but I found it to be just too all over the place for me to champion it. By the time I got to the second half and the story picked up it was a little too-little-too-late for me to really care anymore. I cannot look at the completed production and honestly say, “That’ll do, pig. That’ll do.” 

Academy Award Nominations:

Best Picture: George Miller, Doug Mitchell, and Bill Miller

Best Director: Chris Noonan

Best Supporting Actor: James Cromwell

Best Adapted Screenplay: George Miller and Chris Noonan

Best Art Direction: Roger Ford and Kerrie Brown

Best Film Editing: Marcus D’Arcy and Jay Friedkin

Best Visual Effects: Scott E. Anderson, Charles Gibson, Neal Scanlan and John Cox (won)

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Release Date: August 4, 1995

Running Time: 92 Minutes

Rated G

Starring: James Cromwell and Magda Szubanski

Directed By: Chris Noonan