The pig's OK
Babe (Cert. U) is a live-action family film, based loosely on Dick King-Smith's 1983 book The Sheep-Pig.
The story is that the sheepdog Fly looks after the piglet as a foster mother for farmer Hoggett, who had won the piglet at the fair. Surely the piglet is to be fattened up for the dinner table! But instead, through observation, intelligence and courtesy to the sheep, Babe, for that is the piglet's name, learns the work of a sheepdog and, of course, turns out to be the best one ever.
The film's wonder is that, through the astonishing use of computer technology and animatronics, the animals seem to talk. Some of the animals are Henson puppets, and some are real animals, but it is almost impossible to tell which are which. Terrific!
The disappointment of the film is that, while King-Smith's original book was very definitely British, with competitors for the final sheepdog trials coming from Wales and Scotland, the film is set in a kind of Americanised any farm, anywhere, anytime. It has no real sense of place.
In that sense, perhaps the film makers hoped to make the story into a modern day parable, which the book does not set out to be. What is the message? There is more than a hint that it is meant to be a plug for vegetarianism, as the lovely little porker escapes the bacon slicer. But the main thrust appears to be the idea that it is OK to be different. If a pig wants to be a dog and learn to herd sheep, why shouldn't he?
There is even an extraneous character introduced who is not in the book to act as a sub-text for this theme. It is a duck who wants to be a cockerel. Here we are verging on secular ideas of self actualisation, self-expression and what it means to be free.
But my youngsters didn't notice that when we went to see the film. They just enjoyed a cheerful and uplifting tale about a clever little piggy. The story is pro manners, and pro treating other people with respect, all of which is good. And the line about it being OK to be different? I can live with that, within limits - after all, as a nonconformist, it's part of my Christianity.
