Product: Bebe, Un Coninito Va Muy Lejos (Babe -- Spanish edition) [VHS] (1995)
Rating: 5.0
Babe - The Sheep Pig on Blu-ray
Babe was a surprise contender for Best Picture in 1995. It has elements which make it sound like a formula for a cloyingly sweet kiddie film, namely talking animals, a pig that wants to be a sheepdog, singing mice, a farmer who seldom talks paired with a wife who seldom stops talking. But the component parts were so skillfully crafted, so lovingly combined into a heart-warming and tear-inducing modern fairy tale, that they became a favorite movie for millions of people, a movie which will stand the test of time.The Blu-ray edition is an improvement over the DVD mostly because the resolution is increased for proper presentation on today's larger television screens. Fine detail is good but not spectacular, colors and contrasts are sharp. The talking animals are consistently lifelike and smoothly believable. Voice characterizations are remarkably well done, particularly Babe, the old sheep Maa, the sheepdogs Rex and Fly, and the self-described "anorexic duck" named Ferdinand.James Cromwell is Farmer Hoggett, who wins a piglet at the fair. Because Hoggett is a man of very few words, playing the character made Cromwell worry that he wasn't really acting. Director Chris Noonan assured him that he was doing more acting without words than most actors did with words, and his Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor proved the point.The simple story is told with charm and emotion. The lyrically pastoral setting has at its center a farmhouse with an almost fantasy appearance, occupied by the farmer and his wife who are a comically matched pair of opposites. And the animals are amazing, with the Jim Henson creatures being so lifelike that you have to watch the film two or three times to tell the mechanical creations from the live animals.Watch Babe with the kids. Or maybe watch it on your own, so they don't see the moistening of your eyes when the little pig is told by the mean spirited cat that pigs are only kept by humans for use as food; or when Farmer Hoggett sings Babe out of his depression; or when the two of them together triumph at the sheepdog trials. This is filmmaking that restores a sense of magic to the craft, and creates a story worth visiting again and again.