Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.
I was a hard sell on Babe. Seriously, I had no real desire to watch a movie about a talking pig the first time I became aware of it. I’m still a little bit in denial that Babe was nominated for seven Oscars including Best Picture. It’s a feel-good choice, I suppose, but I can’t imagine it got a lot of votes. Oh, don’t get me wrong; I’m a convert. I like the little pig. I liked it the first time I saw it, and I liked it again tonight, watching it with the girls while coloring Easter eggs. Babe, both the movie and the pig, is insufferably cute, and I mean that in a good way. It’s a great family film—entertaining for kids and adults, and that’s something pretty rare in the world.
Babe the pig (voiced by Christine Cavanaugh) is won by farmer Arthur Hoggett (James Cromwell) at a county fair, a nice prize for a farmer who is so old school he still uses a horse and wagon. The Hoggett farm is sort of hemorrhaging money in no small part because Hoggett and his wife Esme (Magda Szubanski) refuse to modernize in any way. The pig, of course, is there to be eaten eventually, as Mrs. Hoggett has dreams of a nice Christmas ham. Farmer Hoggett, though, sees something special in the pig when Babe helps defend the sheep against thieves and wild dogs.
