Babe: Pig in the City (1998)
Directed by George Miller

Having never seen the original, I suppose I was at a disadvantage for enjoying Babe: Pig in the City, never mind the fact that I hate talking animals and commercials where children are made to say things they obviously don't understand, like the one where the kid with the lemonade stand tells the adult he uses his cellular phone to monitor his "other locations," and gives him a "prospectus" because he'll be "going public" with his "stock options."

Hm, maybe I'm just mad when children are made to say things that I don't understand. Oh well, I still hate talking animals. This movie didn't exactly cure me of that.

The story begins with Babe triumphantly returning from whatever it is he did that was so great in the first movie, to a veritable ticker-tape parade in the small town where he lives. Calamity strikes minutes later when Farmer Hoggett (James Cromwell, with around 3 minutes of total screen time) is trying to fix the well (?) and Babe nearly kills him by trying to help.

So, with Mr. Hoggett out of commission, it's up to Esme Hoggett (Magda Szubanski in an utterly degraded performance) to keep the farm going. Alas, she can't, and the bank comes to foreclose. So Esme realized she must take Babe to "the city" to show him at "the fair" and get "the appearance fee." This is all basically a set-up to get Babe away from the farm, so as not to inadvertently make the same movie twice, I suppose.

Calamity strikes again at the airport, causing Mrs. Hoggett and Babe to have to stay in the city for a few days, and they find lodging at a super-secret hotel for animals and their humans. Mary Stein plays the kooky, allergic animal lover landlady and Mickey Rooney turns in yet another amazingly unpleasant performance as her demented uncle Fugly. I can not think of one thing Mickey Rooney has done in the past thirty years that hasn't given me the same feeling as if I'd seen my own grandfather undoing his adult diaper and dropping his poo down his legs and onto the living room floor. The man seriously gives me the creeps, and all the more so in this film as he speaks in a David Lynch-ian babble. Yuck! Someone, please put him away! 190 years in Hollywood is too much for anyone!

After Mrs. Hoggett is arrested for a pretty contrived series of offenses, Babe must "get wise" to the things that happen in "the city." He meets a family of unscrupulous, hipster-talking chimpanzees who steal Mrs. Hoggett's suitcase and contemplate eating Babe. When Fugly is taken away in an ambulance, the landlady leaves for the night and it's up to the animals to fend for themselves. They form a loose, untrusting confederacy in search of food, and Babe turns out to be a hero when a vicious Pit Bull is almost drowned and Babe saves him (this is after the Pit Bull chases Babe around for like an hour, trying to kill him).

What we're supposed to get out of this is that even though people are different in "the city," simple common decency and naivete will always win out. Or something like that. The movie paints a pretty dark picture of "the city" (although there are a couple city-scape shots that are pretty cool, as "the city" is a composite of most of the major world monuments – the Eiffel Tower, the Sears Tower, the World Trade Center, the Hollywood Hills Sign, etc), but ultimately it all feels like an excuse to have some talking animals.

About the animals: the chimpanzees grow to be very endearing, especially the couple voiced by Steven Wright and Glenne Headly (you'll never picture Steven Wright the same way after seeing his chimp), but making chimpanzees likable is no difficult task. Pig in the City fails to make any dogs likable (I fucking hate talking dogs, and this movie didn't change my mind), and only one cat out of maybe 50 in the movie is anything but annoying.

The duck was dumb, and frankly I think a few talking mountain lions were in order, or llamas – something with some real character, you know? Babe himself (voiced by E.G. Daily of Pee-Wee's Big Adventure and Valley Girl fame) proves to be no big deal, and really the movie seems to be more about the chimps than anyone else – they are the only dynamic characters.

What the producers should have done was abandon the whole idea of this talking pig and just made a movie about talking chimps. Babe is not all that likable, and frankly it grew more than a little wearisome to have about 70% of the punchlines involving someone saying the word "pig." As in: "Get that pig!" or "My PIG!" or "Oh, pig!" or "Follow that pig!" Who knows if any of these lines actually appeared in the movie; I wasn't taking notes, NERD.

After a plot complication involving all the animals being taken to the impound, and of course their ingenious escape, everyone returns to the farm and all ends well. The movie wraps up far too rapidly and is much too pat considering the first half or more was full of painful complications and unfair events. The darkness of Babe: Pig in the City is ultimately more cynical about "the city" as a concept than "the city" itself ever could be.

I can't believe they called this movie Babe: Pig in the City. See, another joke involving the word "pig" being funny. The more I think about it, I really disliked this movie. Talking animals? No thank you! That bullshit is for little kids and littler adults.

Review by Juniper Tree