Babe: Pig in the City (1998)

What really made me want to see both Babe movies was when I found out that Gene Siskel--one of the best known movie critics in the world at the time--called it THE best movie of 1998. His buddy, Roger Ebert, also praised it. I saw their segment when they reviewed this and they were acting like it was a better family movie than The Lion King. I strongly doubted this was better than Saving Private Ryan and Shakespeare in Love, but I didn't think it would be that far behind. Because Siskel and Ebert gave it a better review than the first movie, and they are both very trustworthy critics, I took their word for it being a great film. I know opinions differ, but I don't get why both men loved it as much as they did.What made Babe such a treat was its lovely scenery and different animals talking. In Babe: Pig in the City, Babe and the duck return for the whole movie, then they encounter dogs, cats and monkeys. Everybody sees dogs and cats all the time, and chimps are the subjects of lots of sci-fi movies. In Babe, there is a diversity of animals that are more rare to see, an unclose for that matter. Also, since it takes place in a city, mostly at night, it it not as beautiful as the nature filled farm in the first. We do see the farm in this, but only for a short amount of time. The set pieces for the city looked too comical, I guess for a kiddie effect. I liked the sets, but they were inferior to Babe's. My last problem is how weak the plot and characters developed. In Babe, the plot was kind of weak, but made up for it by having great character development. The plot in this is a bit slower and the character development is weaker too. I didn't not like this. I really did. Is it a fall from the first? Yes, but is it a bad movie entirely? Not at all. With tons of animals being human, the puppets, effects and trainers deserve huge props. Maybe the set wasn't as nice as the first, but it was still very well made and admirable. The development is a bit weaker, but some of your favourite barnyard friends are back and we meet some new, lovable animals. I may watch Babe more often than Babe: Pig in the City, but there will be times where I will be in the mood to see the screen's best pig out of the farm.

A truly terrible sequel to "Babe" (which was a wonderful movie). Famer Hoggett (James Cromwell) is seriously injured when he falls down a well. Great way to start a kids movie--see a character we like getting seriously hurt. Mrs. Hoggett (Magda Szubanski) has to go to the city to save the farm from being sold and takes Babe with her. That's when the movie just goes out of control.The city is a mishmash of all famous buildings from other cities around the world. Some may think that's clever--for me it was disorienting and annoying. Babe meets other animals and here's where it gets really disturbing. At one point Babe picks up a fish in his mouth to get it back into water. The way its shot u think Babe is going to eat the fish. At another point a dog's leash gets tangled on a bridge. He falls over into the water. Because of the way the leash is tangled and he falls he can't get his head out of the water for air! We get a nice shot of the poor animal trying to get some breath. At ANOTHER point a baby monkey is clinging for dear life from a chandelier. Also the human characters aren't treated much better. Mrs. Hoggett is ordered to be strip searched early on! I caught this at a matinée in 1998. I have never forgotten some kids crying because of what they were seeing and outraged parents storming out of the theatre and complaining LOUDLY that this film was not a kids film. The original had dark moments too but nothing like what we see here. This movie seems to enjoy putting humans and animals in danger and shoving it in the audiences faces. THIS has a G rating? Don't let your kids see this one.

people say this movie is too dark for kids what are they thinking this is such a good movie its funny and adventures and wild it had the best ending song made which almost made me cry I can understand its not as good as the first one which the first is a little bit better but this one is one of my fav movies it did scared me when I was 2 Betty scary but now in these days I am not scared of it. If you have not seen this movie you should get it out on DVD if you have the first one on DVD. I like the part where emse hogget swings a cross with the clown pants that was really funny and the part where she gets covered in a bucket of glue and when she said ho dear that made me lauge my head off so if you are looking for something funny then get this movie out on DVD because it will make you lauge it will make you cry and when everyone said to babe thank the pig that was really cute make sure if you have the time to watch this because its such a good movie its better watching this then chicken little its way better then son of the mask and almost as good as star wars eps 3 so I give this movie 8.2 out of 10.

Everyone knows the majority of sequels are rarely more than a pale imitation of their predecessors, and in 'Babe: Pig In The City' we have a textbook case in point.Maybe it's not fair to compare good and bad apples, regardless of how similar they look on the skin. Certainly it violates Rule #2 of The Beginner's Guide to Film Criticism, which says comparison is a quick and convenient but also cheap and lazy way to judge a movie. But an exception might be considered when the follow-up actually tarnishes the memory of what made the first movie so distinctive.In this case the original 1995 feature was one of those all-too rare children's films that everyone except the most jaded adult could watch without shame, and as close to a genuine classic as any movie can get in our strictly disposable, video-devalued 21st century entertainment culture. These days no one even bothers to camouflage the fact that motion pictures are only another cog in a corporate marketing machine, packaged and sold alongside a blitzkrieg of merchandise tie-ins, each one an advertisement for the others: soundtrack albums, videos and DVDs, toys, books, clothing, fast (and slow) food, so forth and so on.The working principle behind this juggernaut of commerce is a paraphrase of P.T. Barnum: there's a retail market born every minute. And in the same spirit of unashamed exploitation a small Australian pig can, with careful management, become a lucrative cash cow.On its surface the new film at least matches the look of the original, with many names reprising their roles on both sides of the camera. James Cromwell and Magda Szubarski are back, playing farmer and Mrs. Hoggett (the former in a sadly diminished walk-on designed to simply tie the two movies together), and the same teams responsible for editing, photography, music and production design are for the most part reunited.But director Chris Noonan is conspicuously absent, his position usurped here by producer George Miller, the man behind the auto-apocalypse 'Mad Max' trilogy in the 1980s. An aptitude for staging car crashes might not seem the ideal training for a children's fable about an adorable talking pig, but Miller clearly sees himself as a visionary fabulist in the mold of Terry Gilliam or Vincent Ward, and not without some justification.Keep in mind that the physical scale of any sequel is always grossly inflated from its parent feature. And every penny of Miller's (more generous) budget is visible on screen, notably in the utopian cosmopolis of the film's title: an amalgam of every famous civic landmark around the globe, from the Eiffel Tower to the Golden Gate Bridge and beyond.But with so much money spent on the often stunning art direction there obviously wasn't enough left over to afford a decent screenplay. The result is thus a near identical film, but with a gaping hole where the story and characters should have been.Miller himself wrote the new script, along with two other 'co-authors' (the scare quotes are a warning that two or more separate screen writing credits rarely indicate a collaborative effort). Apparently none of them had the time or inclination to study the original story very closely, settling instead (in classic sequel fashion) for an over-plotted, underdeveloped action adventure, too complex for its own pre-teen target audience, and supported by necessity on the usual crutch of voice-over narration.The film opens immediately after the last scene of the earlier feature, with Babe's triumphant return to the Hoggett farm after his stunning victory at the National Sheep Dog Trials. But that initial silver lining is soon overshadowed by a token cloud of foreclosure. It's the same nebulous threat facing every farm on the Hollywood back lot: the rural property owner's analogue to whatever killed Ali McGraw in 'Love Story', and in this case providing little more than a thinly contrived excuse for getting Babe lost (never mind how) in the big city, at which point the save-the-farm crisis immediately sinks below the narrative radar.Lost in all the subsequent heavy spending is the innocent, organic charm of the original film, re-imagined by Miller and company as a novelty animal act straight out of a Ringling Brothers circus tent, with the title character reduced to just another sideshow attraction in a menagerie of real and robotic talent. These include, in no special order of importance: a pack of wild urban dogs (who naturally become allies after Babe rescues their leader from drowning), a family of performing monkeys, assorted other wayward pets, and a gratuitous cameo by Mickey Rooney in heavy-duty clown drag.A cast like that doesn't really need an actual plot, leaving not much else to look at besides a lot of frantic, pointless (and surprisingly violent) action, with an acrobatic, mock big-top demolition derby climax. There's a telling disclaimer buried in the end credits reassuring viewers that no actual animals were injured during the production, a moot point given the sometimes alarming realism of the animatronics. Maybe an apology should have been offered instead for spreading cynicism and disillusion among impressionable younger moviegoers and their long-suffering parents.In the end it all boils down to the inevitable theme song: a transparent bid for an Oscar nomination composed by the ubiquitous Randy Newman and performed by erstwhile prog-rocker Peter Gabriel, regressing to the level of his former Genesis back-up vocalist Phil Collins. You might recall the song's title ('That'll Do') as the final line of dialogue from the original film, and a model of expository understatement all but extinct in an industry now geared more toward attention-getting superlatives and sledgehammer subtlety. It's a sad thing, but altogether typical of the mercantile nature of the entire film, to hear such precious nuance so crassly deployed as a (less than memorable) soundtrack sales pitch.