My relative Pat Graham’s capsule review in the Chicago Reader in 1998 for “Babe: Pig in the City” is elegant, bizarre and wonderfully written. He described it to me as a sort of faux-poetry, an alternative approach to reviewing a distinctly alternative film. You can read his whole review here.
And yet Pat said it best to me in person what George Miller’s movie is about. “You watch it, and the film says, Look at this! Look at this! Look at THIS,” he said pointing in every which direction.
I watched it, and sure enough I said, “What’s that? What’s that! What’s THAT?!”
“Babe: Pig in the City” is about as surreal a children’s film as you will ever see. It’s absurd, madcap and overwhelming, and yet the film has an operatic, poetic quality about it that doesn’t fit in the slightest.
The resulting film is a beautiful disaster. It’s colorful, yet cold and disconcerting. It’s chaotic, but not a predictable, boring maelstrom of action. It’s teeming with animals all with dopey dubbed lips, and yet there are so damn many of them that you watch in awe of how much effort this must’ve taken. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Babe: Pig in the City”