Well, any alledged children’s movie that rips off both Sergio Leone and Tennessee Williams can’t be all bad. I never saw the first film, but I took my girlfriend and her 71 year old mother to a matinee on Thanksgiving. We were treated to a fire in a children’s hospital ward, a rampaging pit bull, a biker gang, and what appears to be all of the female extras from the David Lee Roth videos. I like it.
The film starts off with the ending of the first film. In short order, Babe the pig trips up the farmer when installing a water pump putting him in the hospital. His wife can’t run the farm on her own, so she decides to take Babe to a large state fair on its last day for an appearance fee. They miss their connecting flight at the airport, can’t get a flight back for days, and so they are stuck IN THE big CITY. Hilarity ensues.
The city actually appears as a condensed meta-city with the skyline composed of parts of a couple of dozen cities. All of the girls in bikinis are, in turn, in what is a sort of meta-Venice Beach. All of the locations are very stylized to go with the storybook atmosphere, but in such a way that recalls “City of Lost Children” more than anything else, and like that film, “Babe:…” is a children’s movie that’s really for adults. I’d heard that children, ALLEDGEDLY, cried during preview screenings, and it’s easy to see why. I think George Miller has done an amazing job but without the template of a book, like the first movie, he just went buck wild with dark visuals. At least he came up with something original and entertaining. I’d definitely take a date to it (and did). I just wouldn’t take any small children.
