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Boaring
by CarlosC (movies profile)
Sep 15, 2006
5
of
6 people found this review helpful
When his prize-winning, sheep-herding pig sends Farmer Hogget (James Cromwell) to the hospital, his ability to pay his bills is compromised, and his farm of socializing animals is put in jeopardy. Once again, it is up to BABE: PIG IN THE CITY to come through for the farm; this time, in a far-away city, to which he is sent to partake in a sheep-herding exhibition to win some cash. With Farmer Hogget laid-up, his wife Esme (Magda Szubanski) must chaperone the lucky porker. Since all this happens in the first ten minutes of the film, it should come as no surprise that things do not go exactly as planned. As has been well-publicized, the movie is plagued by a morbid melancholy that undermines its ability to capture the positive, can-do spirit of the first, much better film. From the moment in which the well-meaning, meddling Babe (voice of Elizabeth Daily) sends a bucket tumbling down a well onto Farmer Hogget's head, the movie is chock-full of depictions of suffering and death. One of the most disturbing scenes, for children, involves a drowning dog, disturbingly depicted dangling upside down from a bridge with his snout submerged. Halfway through the film, Babe is abducted by an odd clown called Fugly Floom (Mickey Rooney), who minds a circus of chimpanzees. Shortly thereafter, Babe unwittingly causes another mishap, causing the circus to burn down. The scene of fire spreading in a circus full of frightened children and chimpanzees plays out in dreary, silent slow-motion, as do many sequences in the film, with depressing results. Even more sad is the subsequent death of Fugly Floom and the creation of an orphan troupe of monkeys who continue to wear human clothing, as if at a loss of what to do. Ferdinand (voice of Danny Mann), the duck who wanted to crow like a rooster in the first film, makes a pointless return: He trails the plane bearing Esme Hogget and Babe with a group of migrating cranes early in the movie, and catches up with them in the City (a montage of various cities of the world), and then does nothing of note. The depiction of human oddities, which lent charm to the first movie, also returns, but this movie is so deppressing that it only serves to add a weary, surreal tinge. Recurring images of piggish faced humans are a disturbing contrast to the humanly-attired chimps. The most striking of these is Thelonious (voice of James Cosmo), who makes an impression as a pitiful mourner of his dead master. This monkey's continuing to wear human clothing and taking up a role as a butler at the end was really freaky; he reminded me of a displaced slave. Basically, BABE II is one downer of a flick. (Carlos Colorado) |
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