Delayed Reaction: Babe

Premise: A pig dreams of being the sheep dog.

 

Babe is a total sweet-spot movie for me. Similar to fellow 1995 movie Casper. It came out when I was 8. I'm certain I watched it a couple times if not more. Before rewatching it this week, I hadn't seen it in over 2 decades. I don't think I could recall a single specific scene. Just half memories. As soon as I started watching it though, it all came flooding back. The chapters introduced by the mice. The duck that acts like a rooster. James Cromwell's perfect performance. It's the coolest thing about aging: uncovering dormant memories. The only downside is that I think it only works for movies I saw at the right age. Too young and I have no memory*. Too old and my brain was too well formed. Like, I don't think it's simply a matter of needing to wait 25 years to rewatch a movie. As a kid, I'd rewatch the same movie over and over again, even if I didn't like it that much. Then, I'd never watch it again after returning it to Hollywood Video. As a teen or adult, if I like a movie enough, I'll want to rewatch it more than once a quarter-century. So, rewatching a movie like Babe or Casper is an uncommon sensation that's hard to reproduce.

 

*My parents still insist that I had a huge He-Man phase that I don't even have a fragment of a memory of.

 

Anyway, Babe holds up and gave me many great feelings, both from awakening dormant memories and appreciating how simply enjoyable the movie is. This is among the oddest Best Picture nominees in my lifetime. It is a children’s family movie with talking farm animals. It has a tidy plot and brief runtime (a hair over 90 minutes). There are some nice messages about non-violence and not pre-judging people. On paper, nothing about this says that it should be any better received than any other movie of its ilk. Like, why this and not Matilda if I'm just explaining the components that make the movies? Babe is a movie with a beautiful heart though, which is displayed all over the movie. In hindsight, wouldn't this have been the better Australian movie to award that year?

 

Babe also has a fun authorship debate. George Miller produced and cowrote the project. Toward the end, he lost his nerve and hired Chris Noonan to direct the movie out of a fear that no one would take this talking pig movie seriously. Babe went on to be a hit with audiences and critics alike. Even since, George Miller has claimed much of the credit, even though Chris Noonan got the Best Director nomination. It's similar to the Tobe Hooper vs. Stephen Spielberg debate about Poltergeist. Over time though, that one feels like more of a real debate. I mean, Hooper had a stone-cold horror classic under his belt before Poltergeist and Spielberg has hardly leaned into horror before or sense (depending on your definition of Jaws). I can see both their fingerprints on that movie. Meanwhile, George Miller is a highly respected director known for developing odd ideas into successful franchises, and Chris Noonan has only one other feature director credit to his name and has virtually disappeared. If Miller says he handed Babe to Noonan fully formed, I tend to believe him. That said, you could also convince me that Babe needed someone to filter Miller's vision through to make it more digestible. Like, Babe: Pig in the City, which Miller did direct, is nuts.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend