The new live-action Charlotte’s Web is colorful and fun filled with lively talking animals and features another winning performance from the child star du jour, Dakota Fanning.
The film is taken from E.B. White’s mega-selling children’s book. Written in 1952, it has woven its way into the lives of kids all over the world. In fact, it has sold 45 million copies and has been translated into 23 languages.
Fanning is precocious 12 year old Fern who rescues a runt-of-the-litter pig who is about to be dispatched by her father. She bottle-feeds the baby, reads stories to him and, to the delight of the young audience I saw the film with, trundles him around in a baby carriage.
Wilber is sent off to his new home in the barn across the street where he meets a wonderful collection of CGI generated talking animals. The barn is an inhospitable place where the inhabitants squabble and fight but the ever-optimistic Wilber soon has them all getting along.
The story’s moral begins to bubble to the surface when Charlotte, the spider (Julia Roberts), turns up. The creature is regarded as icky by most of the animals but she offers her friendship to Wilber. We soon learn that “the smokehouse hotel” on the other side of the meadow is to be Wilber’s fate.
Charlotte keeps the happy piglet alive by spinning words like ‘terrific,’ ‘some pig’ and ‘humble’ in her web and making Wilber the wonder of the lovely Maine countryside (actually Australia filling in for the state).
The scenes of the spider spinning her delicate web on a magical night are visual highlights in the film.
Charlotte’s Web ends with an old-fashioned country fair where Wilber’s fate depends on his winning the blue ribbon.
Following the book, the exhausted Charlotte must lay her eggs and then die – causing complete silence in the theatre, punctuated only by a few sobs.
Some pig – some cast!
Director Gary Winick has assembled an effective and eloquent vocal company for his film. Robert Redford is a grumpy horse who is afraid of spiders, John Cleese is hilarious as the leader of a flock of sheep, Cedric the Entertainer and Oprah Winfrey are a pair of bickering geese and Steve Buscemi shines as a crabby, garbage loving rat who reluctantly is dragged into the plot to save Wilber.
Special note should be made of Julia Robert’s Charlotte. Roberts’s low, intimate and infinitely sympathetic delivery makes Charlotte a lovable arachnid indeed.
Fanning is an intelligent and appealing actor establishing a glowing human presence in the midst of the marvelously animated performances of the voice actors.
Charlotte’s Web, however, is a story much better told with animation – as was the 1973 release with Debbie Reynolds and Paul Lynde.
There is a feeling of unreality to animation that invites you into a different world where animals can talk. CGI is so real that it leaves little room for flights of fantasy or invention. There is nothing demanded back from the imagination of young audiences sitting out there in the darkness.
And some of the charm of the original is drained away by a script that often abandons wit and good humor, instead leaning on obvious Hollywood smart-talk and smart-ass dialogue.
Details like this, however, will be lost on young audiences who will respond to the emotional warmth and lively characters. There is a message and a moral here about love and friendship that maintains throughout this gentle and entertaining movie.
Opens wide USA December 15. MPAA: Rated G
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