Babe: Pig In The City

I've never seen the first "Babe", the one that was nominated for Best Picture in 1995. I was ten when it came out and a non-animated film about a talking pig did not pique my interest. The sequel that followed in 1998 didn't register on my radar at all as I figured it would just be more of the same shenanigans. However, "Babe: Pig In The City flopped at the box office and was lambasted by some critics for being too different from its predecessor. Fans were expecting another light romp with their favorite barnyard characters and director George Miller (of Mad Max fame) instead supplied them with a darker, more visually stunning approach. As the film ended up making both Siskel and Ebert's top ten of 1998 list, even topping Siskel's, and has now developed a cult following, I decided it was time to forget my biases and watch this underrated film.

"Babe: Pig In The City" is a remarkable achievement. It defies classification as a family film or children's picture. Obviously the main characters are talking animals, but they live in a world straight out of a Terry Gilliam movie. I can't stress enough how fantastic this movie is. Pixar fans consistantly tout those films as being made for all ages; that there are jokes subtle enough for the parents, but the kids will love the characters and scenery. "Wall-E" and "Up" have made adults bawl in their theatre seats. Personally, I've enjoyed every Pixar film I've watched, but none would ever make any top movie list of mine. "Babe: Pig In The City" is the first film I've seen in who knows how long that fits those qualifications.

Within ten to twenty minutes I knew I was watching something special. The set of "Metropolis", the city where Babe and his owner stay, is wonderfully charming, quaint, mysterious, and wild at the same time. It represents all cities, having landmarks as varied as the Statue of Liberty, Sydney's Opera House, and the Golden Gate Bridge, and the sight of seeing all those buildings and monuments in one realistic setting was mind-blowing. The narrator describes the farm Babe is from as a "little left of the Twentieth Century". The farm is a beautiful place and the juxtaposition of Babe on the farm and in the city is jarring at first. Then we discover that "Metropolis" has Venitian waterways home to a hotel for talking animals and Mickey Rooney in a clown suit and everything feels a little better.

I don't know how they made it look like the animals were talking, (a combination of real animals, special effects, and puppets I presume), but the "acting" by the variety of creatures Babe the pig encounters is realistic and engrossing. There are monkeys wearing clothes, including an orangutan named Thelonius who has come to adore his human keeper and perhaps like King Louie, aspires to be human too. The animals' faces in this movie all carry very realistic human expressions and Thelonius with his combination of wisdom, sadness, and mysteriousness was my favorite character.

There were defintely some dark moments. There is a scene where a character comes close to drowning that reminded me of the scene in the most recent episode of "Lost" where Sayid is forcebly held underwater. What makes the dark scenes in this movie even darker is that unlike a old time Disney cartoon or even computer animated Pixar creation, the animals in this movie are real and lifelike. It's not like watching Nemo the fish or Ratatouille the rat narrowly escape death. The fact that these are real animals in a real world with real rules with discernable personalities is very affecting for the viewer. I didn't cry, but some scenes made me feel very anxious and sad. The movie's also hilarious, with the laugh out loud scenes outnumbering the melancholy ones.

I find it hard to describe just what the tone of "Babe: Pig In The City" was. It's similar to a lifelike version of those old Warner Brothers and Disney shorts, minus most of the slapstick. It's one of the few films made for children in the last decade-plus with the same intelligence as those old cartoons from the forties and fifties. It almost felt like a children's movie that Terry Gilliam or Guillermo Del Toro would create, but there was something about that transcended any sort of description. The combination of the art direction, sets, characters, music (including Piaf's "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien", Martin's "That's Amore", and Elvis' "Are You Lonesome Tonight" sung by high-pitched mice), and script took me away so fully to this world that I can only be in awe of the people behind it. If you're against the idea of watching a movie like this just like I was, I implore you to give it a look anyway. This is why movies exist.

Dark City

1939 is often regarded as Hollywood's peak year. "Gone With The Wind", "The Wizard of Oz", "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington", and "Stagecoach" among others all were released in that short period of time along with France's "The Rules of the Game" along as a bonus. Those are all bonafide classics, but I've always thought of 1998 as a year filled with top notch entertainment. "Saving Private Ryan", "Pleasantville", "The Truman Show", "There's Something About Mary", "Out Of Sight", "The Big Lebowski", "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels", "Rushmore", and "Blues Brothers 2000" have all made lasting impressions on me, and that's not counting the other great 1998 films I haven't yet watched. I'm aware now that 1998 was the year I started to notice non-Disney films so those 12 months of movies hold a special place in my mind.

"Dark City" was Roger Ebert's pick for "Best Movie of 1998", (Siskel's was "Babe: Pig In The City", another 1998 classic I haven't yet seen). It's also one of the few DVD's he's done a commentary track for, indicating his support and love for it. I've always been interested in seeing it; I'd only heard that it was similar to "The Matrix", but better and released earlier. I also dig those mindbending sci-fi thrillers in the vein of "Minority Report", "Vanilla Sky", and the 1960's classic "Seconds" (See Seconds NOW).

Anyway after not only watching "Dark City" for the very first time, but also choosing to indulge in the 11 minute extra "Director's Cut" for my first taste of the movie, I feel like the case for 1998 being a golden year for cinema has just gotten a little stronger. This movie is a trip. The title is pretty literal, the setting is a "Dark City", and this dark city is home to some of the most engrossing effects I've ever seen. You can keep your Avatar, here director Alex Proyas has buildings grow and shape themselves like organic objects in his 1930's film noir town. You are thrown right in without a net right from the start as it seems to be a noirish detective story. A man wakes up in a hotel tub with amnesia, next to a dead body. As he struggles to figure out what's going on, we do too..., but all of a sudden things go kind of crazy and you realize this is a totally different world you're dealing with. Answers don't come fast and they don't come easy. By the end, there is a bit of exposition to fill in some of the blanks that appear, but while that helps answer some questions, it also raises lots more.

As I watched more and more, I realized what made "Dark City" stand out from other similar movies of its time period was its overall feel and design. Proyas was hugely influenced by the silent German expressionistic movies of the early part of the 20th century. The city in this movie is vast and mysterious, and becomes almost terrifying once you see it grow and morph. There is no sun and the constant electrical light adds a lot to the atomsphere. There were times where I was reminded of Terry Gilliam's "Brazil", especially during the chase scenes. Thinking your safe, but then realizing you are not where you supposed you were is a terrifying feeling.

There's a great cast including Rufus Sewell, Jennifer Connolly, Kiefer Sutherland, and William Hurt (who, like Michael Caine, makes any movie better; example: Mr. Brooks). Sewell and Connolly both do fine work, but their characters aren't very interesting. Hurt is a police detective and no one plays a noble authority figure like William Hurt. He fits perfectly into this mashed up film noirish world. Kiefer Sutherland, in between his roles as the raging a-hole in "Stand By Me" and Jack Bauer is almost unrecognizable as a sort of Quasimodo psych doctor who knows the secrets of the city. He's really fun to watch and even as his character is somewhat over the top, he manages to underplay that. There's also a character who's a former policeman, who's going crazy because he's started to realize what wrong with their world. Apparently Proyas was going to base the story around this character, but flipped it to focus on Sewell's "fugitive" character instead to make it less analytical and more emotional. Well the crazy police guy is also fun to watch and fills his scenes perfectly.

The plot itself is more a story to ponder than to watch. Halfway through I realized I wasn't that interested in what was happening, I just wanted to find out the answers to what was going on. It also stuck me fascinating just how many "This isn't what you think it is" stories were produced in the late '90s-early '00s period. At various points I was reminded of the inferior "Thirteenth Floor", "The Truman Show", and "Vanilla Sky". There's also a fantastic "Twilight Zone" episode referenced in "Vanilla Sky" that also falls into this sort of genre. "Shadow Play" with Dennis Weaver, about a guy on death row claiming that the world is only his recurring nightmare he has over and over. As a piece of art, "Dark City" is 5 stars, fantastic. It wasn't nominated for any Oscars, not even an Art Direction one, which is ridiculous. As a story however, it has its faults, which is why I still love "The Truman Show" and "Pleasantville" much more