Babe: Pig in the city

I know you may be wondering why on earth I’d want to post a review for such an obscure children’s film out of the blue, but trust me, if you’ve seen it you know. Babe: Pig in the City is the most violent, dark, complex, emotional children’s film I’ve ever seen, and above all else, a really great movie period.
IT starts off with The farmer getting put up in bed and the wife having to take babe into “the city” to get money from appearing at a state fair (babe is now a celebrity, lol) Sounds like a cute little kids film so far, and it is. Until the Mrs. Gets arrested at the airport for drug trafficking!!!! You read that right. Can this REALLY be happening? Well, they finally get to the city, which looks like the landscape from BLADE RUNNER or DARK CITY or BATMAN only during the day, and things get worse. The animal hotel they stay at has this absent minded clown living there with a bunch of his monkeys, performing for terminally ill children. Babe gets swept up in the show, just in time for this old clown to die. Yea, that’s right, He dies, and the animals of the hotel are all left alone in the hotel to fend for themselves.
This leads to a scene that has to be seen to be believed. The monkeys are breaking into a store to get food because they are all starving, while babe distracts some guard dogs. This leads to an EPIC and scary chase through the creepy twisted city streets that collimates with babe getting the guard dog tangled in his own leash, upside down over a river. We watch as this dogs head slowly drops under the water, and watch his hind legs helplessly kick and struggle for air. Then the kicking slows. The other animals watch with no compassion as this dog slowly drowns to death. So we’re 40 minutes in and we have a drug bust, an on screen slo mo death, and now we’re watching a dog die. WHAT!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! So the movie doesn’t quite go THERE and babe saves the day. Only for the pound to show up and chase down all the animals with nets and tranq guns (yes, they gun down animals) in another sequence, put to classical music, of the animals one by one being hunted down and caught.
Of course babe and Ferdinand the duck (the best comic relief sidekick since Dory from Finding Nemo) are spared and it’s up to them and a little pooch names flealick to save the day. Did I mention flealick is handicap and can’t use his hind legs, so he rolls around in a doggie wheelchair. Oh, and the reason he can’t walk is cause his human put him in a bag and dropped him out the window. Yea, I’m serious!!!!
So on one hand I’m glad I didn’t see this as a child. I would surely have been scared for life. I’m 24 and honestly had a really hard time watching that dog slowly drown.. But as an adult (sort of) I can appreciate the rather complex character arcs and life lessons these pint sized animals must learn. They deal with parental death, they deal with being homeless, and they learn the hard way how to survive on their own. All of this is NOT sugar coated, or spoon fed to the audience, but very graphically matter of factly shown. Credit must go to the director/ writer who is also responsible for the MUCH more gentle first one (which was nominated for an OSCAR!!!) and just recently HAPPY FEET (another cute family film with sudden dark turns). He doesn’t hold back in the dark material, making the lighter ones carry all the more impact. The honest and brutal story, along with literally some of the best cinematography and set design I’ve ever seen in my life, and amazing choral and classical music score make this one of the best movies I’ve seen. I can not recommend this enough, and I know everyone is thinking “but it’s a dumb animal kids movie sequel” but I guarantee you if you give it a chance you will NOT be disappointed. A quick IMDB search shows it was, in 1998 when it came out, on Ebert top ten of the year list, as well as Newsweek and TIME!!!!lol seriously, how did I miss this movie?????