Babe, el cerdito en la ciudad

Those who liked 'Babe' will wonder whether 'Babe: Pig in the City' is a good enough sequel. My answer is: definitely! Here are adorable pig is seen with some new colourful friends, lots of them, in a new adventure. Just like the first one, this one too is sheer delight, albeit a little more serious. I don't understand why people are complaining that this isn't a movie for kids. Why not? I think it's an excellent family film. There is no death or blood. It portrays a part of reality (e.g. that accidents happen, that there are others who are less fortunate than us etc) without getting to graphic and that's why it's great for kids too. It's a lot of fun and even suspenseful. I was in my teens when I first saw this film. There's one scene where Flealick follows the van but one he loses hold, he slides onto one side of the street and lies there motionless while the wheels on his 'scooter' rotate. For a moment my heart had stopped beating (as I thought he was dead) and I was so hoping that he hadn't passed away. The sequence that followed brought me back to laughing mode. Magda Szubanski has more to do here and she displays her comic abilities brilliantly. A strange thing I noticed was she had an American accent in the first film but here it's Australian and British. The rest of the voice-acting is done very well and in sync. The fictitious city (it may be Sidney as the famous opera-house was visible in one scene) is suitably dark and mysterious. I found 'Babe: Pig In The City' more uplifting than the first movie. I wish there was a third movie that would have made it a complete trilogy.

Talk about a major disappointment! First time George Miller has ever made a dog. From Road Warrior and Dead Calm to Lorenzo's Oil and the original Babe, this guy has turned everything to gold. Nothing lasts forever. The only thing this film managed to show is that animals can be as ugly as humans. Gene Siskel actually picked this as one of the 10 best films of the year.Thumps down...

It's so technically well executed and gorgeous to look at (obviously George Miller asked for and got a huge budget this time around) but almost every thing that happens to these cutest-of-cute animals is *mean-spirited*. The sweetness of the last film is gone, as is that movie's easy-going but tightly-woven plot. Instead we have Hollywood histrionics and chase scenes and randomness that just seems like delay tactics for the first 3/4 of the film. For example, we follow that duck every now and then as he chases after but never finds Babe. The duck arrives in the city and is immediately shot at by twenty members of a rifle range. Funny? No. It's done in an ultra-realistic way, it looks like he's actually injured, there's no Roadrunner & Wile E. Coyote cartoonness to this violence.

Finally after much depressing animal cruelty the surviving heroes get together and head off towards a final rescue act, but by that point I'd turned off. It involved the farmers wife in a clown suit bungee jumping around a restaurant and a bunch of balloons and other silly fighting. Not a very fun movie, and it could have been!

worst moments:

* Andy Rooney, made up as a clown, led off to die in a stretcher.

* Cute puppy says, "my human put me in a sack and threw me in the water"

Many people just don't get it. They may tell you this movie is too dark for children. Don't believe them. This is a great movie for children. Didn't "Snow White" have an old hag try to kill her with a poison apple. Death is darker than any "dark tone" laid out in this gorgeous piece of cinema, but "Snow White" didn't get as many negative comments as this movie. The kids that watched the original "Babe" have grown up, and so did the franchise. Sure the movie may have a few adult moments than the original; for instance, most kids won't understand the whole Mrs. Hoggett cavity search incident. But overall this movie presents the great moral that everyone should be good to each other over everything else, even to someone who might have done something wrong to you. That is a message that everyone, adults and children, should hear and consider. In the end, "Babe" achieves respect and gains a whole new group of friends from his good deeds, and everyone is happy including the audience. I think this movie will be considered a classic sometime in the future, as it should be.

Very, and I do mean very, strange picture that is suffering an identity crisis in every major cinematic area. "Babe: Pig in the City" is of course the sequel to the critical and box office smash of 1995. This time the titled animal must go to the city with its owner's wife (Magda Szubanski) to raise money from guest appearances after his success in the original. The farmer (barely seen and totally wasted James Cromwell) suffered an accident and his property is about to be taken by the bank. Thus Babe must come to the rescue once more. In the city Szubanski finds a hotel full of dogs, cats and even monkeys and stays there. The story-line then goes out of focus as animal rights and the place that all of God's creatures have in the world becomes the major focal point. The subject matter is dealt with in a distorted way that is more dark than funny. Director George Miller (who produced the original and assisted with Chris Noonan's Oscar-nominated direction in 1995) does a great job with visual effects and art direction, but struggles with a screenplay that has no earthly idea what it wants to do. The fact that Miller is not the director that Noonan is becomes an apparent problem pretty quickly as well. The original worked because of warmth, compassion, intelligence and believability. None of those attributes are in this sequel. 2.5 out of 5 stars.