Charlotte's Web Review

The E. B. White children's classic, Charlotte's Web, seems to be such an icon that it never occurred to me that there have only been two versions of the movie to date. There was an animated feature from Hanna-Barbera in 1973 and more recently a live-action one in 2006 from Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies. I was raised on the old animated version, but I still think this newer one is pretty good.

Fern Arabel (Dakota Fanning) is a young girl growing up on her family's farm. When a sow gives birth to some piglets, Fern's father (Kevin Anderson) intends to do away with the runt of the litter,  but Fern persuades her father to let him live. The pig, named Wilbur (Dominic Scott Kay), becomes Fern's pet, but when he grows larger, he's put in the care of homer Zuckerman (Gary Basaraba), a farmer down the road. Fern is still able to visit Wilbur regularly, and it soon occurs to both of them that pigs tend to have a limited life expectancy on a farm, and that unless something unusual happens, Wilbur will eventually become Christmas dinner. Charlotte (Julia Roberts), a friendly spider who lives in the barn, hatches a plan to make Wilbur seem special enough to save by weaving messages about the "terrific" pig into her web, and she soon persuades her barnyard friend to join in her plan. Time files and the end of the season approaches and everyone wonders if Charlotte's messages be enough to save Wilbur.

Charlotte's Web was a very cute movie. It was a competent retelling of the classic children's book that will easily endear it's audience. It's got a timeless feel to it, similar to that of The Odd Life of Timothy Green. The book was originally printed in the early 1950's, but this movie doesn't specifically take place in that time period. It could very easily have taken place at any time; the clothing and sets looked typical of an idyllic Norman Rockwell style country setting. There are no TV's or cell phones, but they probably wouldn't have looked terribly out of place. This gives a timeless feel that people of any age could relate to.

Each of the two Charlotte's Web movies have their own thing to appeal to kids. Apparently, it was assumed that to please kids in the 70's there had to be lots of musical numbers because kids like songs. In 2006 it was assumed that to please kids there had to be a bunch of fart jokes because kids like fart jokes. I can understand wanting to appeal to the target kid audience, but the fart jokes got pretty annoying after a while. This version of Charlotte's Web didn't have musical numbers, but we did spend a lot of time watching Templeton the rat doing gross rat things. They spent a lot of time on the rotten egg scene, I thought. It's interesting to see how movie studios have changed their tactics in kid movies, but I'm not sure that moving to fart jokes from musical numbers is necessarily a flattering development.

Charlotte is given a friendlier face than
that of a real spider.

There are a lot of stars that make up the animal voice work. It includes Steve Buscemi, John Cleese, Oprah Winfrey, Cedric the Entertainer, Kathy Bates, Reba McEntire, Robert Redford, Thomas Haden Church, and André Benrubi. It's a fantastic cast that pulled together and made a pretty darn good movie.

I watched Charlotte's Web a good eight years after its original release. CGI effects haven't made particularly huge leaps and bounds in that time, but the computer animation still looks pretty good today. Charlotte's size doesn't always seem to stay consistent from scene to scene. Charlotte has the hairy texture of a spider, but is given a bit of a cartoonish appearance, probably to keep arachnophobia audiences from losing it during the movie, or at least to keep from making new arachnophobes out of the young audience.

Charlotte's Web simply has too much talent and too strong a story to truly mess it up. There was some potential to do more with the story, but this incarnation is respectable and a good update to the classic story for a new generation of kids. It's got everything a good clean family film needs; humor, drama, some sadness, and an emotionally satisfying ending. I liked this version of Charlotte's Web even with the excess of fart jokes. If you've got kids at home, this is something you may consider getting a copy of. Even though I enjoy kid movies from time to time, I didn't really enjoy this one enough to get a copy myself. My opinion might be clouded by nostalgia, but I think the animated version was just a little bit better.

Surely you've seen at least one version of Charlotte's Web. Which one do you prefer? Comment below and tell me why!

Movie Review: Rango

Nickelodeon Studios primarily makes television shows targeted towards kids. These include Rugrats, SpongeBob SquarePants, The Fairly Odd Parents, and Avatar: the Last Airbender. Later they started producing movies that were based off of their best selling television programming. This is how we got Good Burger (1997) and The Rugrats Movie (1998) among others. They did a few films that were not blatant advertisements for their television show such as Harriet the Spy (1996), Snow Day (2000), and Charlotte's Web (2008). Most of their movies have been less than stellar. Then along came Rango (2011), directed by Gore Verbinski. Given Nickelodeon Movies’ running streak of mediocrity, Rango didn’t even make it on my list of movies to see. Fortunately, I ended up seeing the movie anyway.

Rango (Johnny Depp) is a sheltered chameleon living as an ordinary family pet. He keeps himself entertained by being a method actor, acting out his own plays with inanimate objects as other characters. While traveling, the family car hits a bump sending, Rango and his cage flying off the vehicle and out into the desert. After wandering in the desert for some time, he comes across the gritty, gun-slinging town called Dirt. Dirt is populated by a host of wacky, lawless desert creatures, which makes the timid Rango stick out like a sore thumb. Rango uses his acting skills and conjures up an old west style character to help him try to blend in; this is where he comes up with the name “Rango.” This new persona is welcomed as a last hope for Dirt, which is slowly dying of thirst. Rango is made Sheriff to help figure out why the water is gone. Sheriff Rango’s efforts stir up some nasty villains and political intrigue.

I think the most blaringly obvious positive quality of this movie is the animation. This is some of the best CGI I’ve seen, comparable to the quality of animation that has made Pixar so successful. There’s so much detail in the characters: you can see the scales on the lizards, distinguish the feathers on the birds, and most impressive is the animation for the water. Water played a significant driving force in this story so it needed to look good. Water is very difficult to animate well; it needs really detailed control over the particle effects and lighting. Rango pulled this visual effect off brilliantly. The characters are designed to be zany and exaggerated, but still have lots of detail and care behind them. They just bring to mind some of the hand drawn characters from classic animated features. Another great thing about the animation is the color. Rango used such vibrant colors that it was almost difficult to take your eyes from the screen at any point. It is obvious that Rango was created with loving attention and detail by the artists involved in its production. Computer generated imagery can be a quick shortcut in animation, but shouldn’t be an excuse for creating low quality animated films.

The character Rango, himself, is quite interesting. He’s good natured, and hilariously naïve, but makes his way through his problems apparently by drawing inspiration from western movies he must have seen. He lacks confidence, but does his best not to let the townsfolk of Dirt see it. As a chameleon, Rango is meant to blend in, which he tries to do. But great responsibility is placed on Rango; how do you aim high when your purpose in life is to blend in? Rango (not Johnny Depp) really does improvise as he makes his way through the story, sort of inventing his character as he goes. I don’t particularly believe that the “fake it ‘till you make it” philosophy is a very good one to approach a problem, but Rango does just that, and he does make it; ultimately becoming the character he made up for himself at the beginning.

The story in Rango is absurdly creative! It kind of pays homage to a lot of old western movies, but includes a lot of comedy. The more westerns you’ve seen the funnier this movie will be. If Blazing Saddles (1974) was CGI animated with silly desert animals as the characters, you’d basically have Rango. It is delightfully non-formulaic. I kept thinking to myself, “yeah, here’s the part where they realize he’s not the gun-slinger he says he is.” But the movie didn’t do it. I kept expecting cliché story elements to pop up, but most of them didn’t; and the ones that did were done in a creative, unpredictable way. This gave the movie an invigorating, fresh quality to it.

I’m glad I ended up seeing Rango. It was fun, creative, humorous, and well designed and executed. It's a satire of a lot of old westerns. I'm sure if you're a fan of westerns you'll get a big kick out of it. And if you're a fan of silly comical animated movies, you'll also get a big kick out of it. It’s a good, clean family film that is intelligently written to keep viewers of all ages entertained. I am not the center of the target audience for Rango, but for those who are in the target audience, I recommend adding this movie to your DVD/Blu-Ray collection.

What movie have you seen in the last year that significantly exceeded your expectations? Why did it surprise you so much?