Chapter Two:
Babe : Pig in the City
By Brett Beach
March 25, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Back in the late '90s, when I supplemented my movie-going habits by working a second job at a downtown Portland branch of the Act III chain - which allowed me to pick up some extra cash and see pretty much everything around town for free either opening weekend or within two to three weeks from start date - I made it my mission to see at least 75% of all mainstream films and 75% of all art-house films playing at any given time. Random numbers, perhaps, but I figured three-quarters was worth aiming for. Granted, this means I must cop to having been the only person in the theater on a weeknight for films like the Chris Klein-Josh Hartnett-Leelee Sobieski deathless weepie Here on Earth; the Kate Hudson-Joshua Jackson thrill-less thriller Gossip; the Luke Wilson-Natasha Henstridge mirthless laffer Dog Park, and the ill-advised big-screen adaptation of The Mod Squad. But there were plusses as well.
My theater, the Broadway Metroplex, was going to have an exclusive engagement of Boogie Nights for the first month it was in town. We got the film cans in a day earlier than we employees were expecting and since the associate manager was busy with administrative duties that night, I got the "task" of screening it - all by myself at just past midnight - to make sure that there were no serious defects with the print. Having caught Hard Eight only six months prior during the two weeks it was in town, I was pumped to see Paul Thomas Anderson's take on the porn industry. Viewing Boogie Nights in an empty theater remains one of the single greatest movie viewing moments of my lifetime. On the flip side, I loved to walk into the packed auditorium during the first weekends we had it, at just about the time the doughnut shop sequence starts, to watch people's reactions as those five minutes of unexpected violence and dark humor played out.
For the last weekend of November 1998, I was doing well at keeping up to my percentage ideal. Among the films in the top 20 at that time, I had seen (or would shortly see): A Bug's Life, The Rugrats Movie, Enemy of the State, Meet Joe Black, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, Home Fries, Elizabeth, The Siege, Very Bad Things, Jerry Springer: Ringmaster, Pleasantville, Celebrity, American History X, Antz, Life is Beautiful, Waking Ned Devine, and this week's subject - Babe: Pig in the City. I did not catch The Waterboy until its video release - intentionally - and still have never seen I'll Be Home For Christmas (also quite, quite on purpose.)
I can't imagine keeping up that pace consistently anymore. And it isn't simply by virtue of being a father and knowing that from an aspect of time, it isn't an option. My personal preference is not to knock myself out anymore. Three years ago, I finally fulfilled a long-standing promise to myself and crammed in as many films as I could at the Portland International Film Festival: thirty-six (plus an assortment of shorts) over 14 days. I consider that an achievement but couldn't imagine doing that year in, year out. And then multiplying that by any number of other local, national, international festivals that die-hard cinephiles queue up for and for which they plot out screening schedules with the breathless precision of a general leading recruits into battle. I may dream of what the atmosphere would be like at Cannes, Sundance, Toronto, Berlin, Venice, but I am happy to let them remain just dreams for now.
"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."
What exactly is a "children's film?" Does this differ at all from a "family film?" Is a motion picture that seems for all intents and purposes to be aimed at younger members of the movie-going public (i.e. a lot of anthropomorphic animals, animation, zany characters voiced by recognizable personalities, slapstick chases/antics, an overabundance of poop and fart jokes, various male actors being felled by well-placed shots/kicks/sporting goods to their manhood) to be criticized if it contains not-so-kid-friendly elements? What does this even mean? Are the above listed elements even necessary? To wit, a brief consideration of what thinking outside the box can bring.
In 1999, two directors who in their respective outputs to date had never been within spitting distance of a G rating, got precisely that for their films. David Mamet's adaptation of classic play The Winslow Boy (a fine achievement unjustly underrated), and David Lynch's The Straight Story (a Disney release and the first of three consecutive masterworks) retain their creators' unique way with language, quirky plot rhythms, and sense that an audience has not encountered these worlds before. Neither one neither played in more than 200 theaters at a time nor made its budget back domestically, but both were intended as smaller films so the stakes were considerably lower. They each were on my shortlist for the best of the year and are examples of quality filmmaking that could be and should be enjoyed by the family. (I like to think of The Straight Story as "Lynch with training wheels" a film to help ease the young lads and lasses gently on the road to Eraserhead or Inland Empire.)
To lead into discussion of Babe: Pig in the City, a very expensive film that from a commercial viewpoint flopped miserably here and abroad, was decidedly not universally beloved like its predecessor, and was plagued in the weeks prior to its release by increasingly hysterical concern that it was simply too dark and upsetting for young audiences, I want to briefly fete a film that is often wrongly derided as a bomb (in the same breath as Ishtar or The Postman.)
Thirty years ago, Robert Altman made his one and only flirtation with big-budget studio filmmaking. Popeye is an Altman film through and through and yet is best seen as an unwieldy yet joyous collaboration among perfectly (type)cast actors (Robin Williams, Shelley Duvall, Paul Dooley), a bigwig producer (Robert Evans), a playwright turned screenwriter (Jules Feiffer), two pop artist/composers (Harry Nillson and Van Dyke Parks), two major studios (Paramount and Walt Disney), an iconic comic strip/cartoon character and a $20 million dollar budget. Reviews were mixed but there were as many raves as pans and in the end, Popeye grossed nearly two and a half times that budget domestically.
Altman, ever the iconoclast, continued his tradition of pissing off all the "important people" with the purse strings and even commercial success couldn't buy him back into the fold for the next decade. With plans recently announced to subject the sailor man with the spinach can to a good old-fashioned 3D spit and polish revamping, now is a great time to check out Altman's refreshingly sweet and surprisingly cynicism-free take on Popeye. Wonderful songs, set direction that establishes Sweethaven as a sprawling seaside town that just might sprawl off into the water, and comic strip panel visual verve are all served up in a wrapper of Altman's overlapping dialogue and widescreen cinematographic ramblings. Williams, in his feature film debut, delivers an inventive but spot-on performance without any of the stream-of-consciousness meanderings that marked a lot of his work as the ‘80s slipped into the ‘90s. He's as Method here as a young Brando might have been in the role (admittedly, quite the image to work through in one's mind).
Which brings us to the further adventures of Babe. Three years after the simple but disarming tale of a pig that wants to be a sheepdog became 1995's sleeper hit/sensation by grossing $63 million in the US and another $190 million worldwide, Babe: Pig in the City opened over the long Thanksgiving weekend, leading a weak crop of holiday releases with $8 million over the five day period. Sporting a $90 million budget, the second installment of Babe's travails was thoroughly rejected by viewers worldwide, grossing just under $18 million domestic and a smidge over $50 million international. This viewer snubbing was mirrored in its near exclusion from the year's Oscar nominations, a near 180 degree slap in the face from the seven nods Babe had received. Even though Babe: Pig in the City's technical achievements rivaled those of Babe's, the sequel's lone nomination came not for art direction, visual effects, sound mixing or editing, but for Original Song, a Randy Newman composition sung by Peter Gabriel.
Such a reception seems to fly in the face of the praise and love lavished on the first film. It would be expected that there should at least have been a strong opening weekend, followed by sharp declines from (undeserved) bad word-of-mouth. Instead, it played like that sequel that seems to fail both because no one asked for it and because it steadfastly refuses to offer up the same pleasures as the first. Babe: Pig in the City compared to Babe puts me in the frame of mind to think of the second act of Stephen Sondheim's delightful musical Into the Woods versus the first. Sondheim takes familiar fairy tale archetypes and lets them play out their well-worn destinies in the first half, then humorously explodes those expectations with a pointed look at what happens after "happily ever after."
Babe: Pig in the City acknowledges such a reality in its opening scene as the Narrator observes upon Babe and Farmer Hoggett's congratulatory parade back to the farm that "the first hazard for the returning hero is fame." Almost but not quite bordering on self-awareness, that comment encapsulates the reaction that the film provoked when compared unfavorably to Babe, as well as the film's reason for being. This will be about Babe's journey past the easily earned happy ending. While Babe is a fable with a tidy moral, Babe: Pig in the City is an acknowledgement that life can be messy, bad things can happen quite unexpectedly, and even those with good hearts and the best of intentions may find themselves overwhelmed by the crush of humanity. I have a soft spot in my heart for Babe and its soaring spirit, but its spawn is in many ways the more astonishing and invigorating of the two.
Babe: Pig in the City is, it must be said, considerably more intense than the first Babe, showcasing set pieces that balance dark-humored plot points with a fair amount of frenetic action. Farmer Hoggett's dehabilitating accident in the well at the beginning - which it should be noted is done without the expected sound effects of blunt force head trauma and crushed fingers but with Roscoe Lee Browne's narration on the soundtrack to cushion the blow - sets the tone. The three key sequences in what follows out from there, Babe's pursuit around city streets by a vicious bull terrier, attempts by animal control to round up a hotel filled with a menagerie of animal species, and a vaudeville style circus act climax set among a swanky charity dinner are all intricately choreographed chases that straddle the line between exhilaration and despair, laughter and sadness. The Metropolis where this all takes place, with a skyline that deliriously and cheekily references iconic landmarks from nearly every continent is mean to be an everycity (or perhaps as the title indicates, THE city.)
All three of these passages also share moments that illustrate the size of Babe's heart and his willingness to push on through the heat of the moment - saving the bull terrier from certain watery death, finding a way to get a gasping goldfish back into the water or alerting a dexterous orangutan to make a save for a baby ape falling from an overhead chandelier.
The changes in storyline and tone are perhaps a reflection of behind-the-scenes differences. George Miller, having produced and co-adapted the first Babe, stepped into the director's chair and spun an original tale far more concerned with the animals than with the humans. Despite some limited searching, I still can't determine if James Cromwell's significantly reduced part was in response to a desire not to make the sequel or if it simply reflects that the plot of Babe: Pig in the City has no room for him. Considering the ebullience and joy he brought to Babe and his nomination-worthy scene where a serenade to Babe turns into a spirited spontaneous jig, his absence is felt quite heavily and all the wonders of the second film can't quite make up for that. Miller's visual style, so strong in projects as diverse as The Road Warrior, Lorenzo's Oil and The Witches of Eastwick, is at its apex here. Scene after scene is crammed with invention and ingenuity and always a beating heart at the core. The climax is the most exhausting but least enjoyable sequence, although Miller deserves credit for allowing his vision for the film to unfold without compromise, and for ending with a most unlikely of chase scenes.
The voice actress for Babe also switched out, and in one of the more perfectly aligned coincidences in Hollywood history, one Rugrats actress (Christine Cavanaugh) was replaced by another (E.G. Daily). The differences between the two actually suit the change in plots as Cavanaugh's squeaky spunk is replaced with Daily's more tentative and weary tones.
By the final old-time camera iris out, Babe has once again found himself in his master's good graces, uncovered a way to help out the less fortunate simply by being true to himself, and discovered that yeah, "the city can really take it out of ya." Would that part of his triumph have resulted in yet another big-screen adventure.
Next time: He's Chevy Chase. And you're not.