Jeremy Clarke reviews

Babe

Distributed by
Pioneer LDCE

Cat. No: PLFEB 34381

Cert: U

Running time: 90 minutes

Sides: 2 (CLV)

Year: 1995

Pressing: UK, 1996

Chapters: YES

Sound: Dolby Surround

Widescreen: 1.85:1

Price: £24.99

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Director:

Chris Noonan

Cast:

James Cromwell
Magda Szubanski

You might think that Babe is a movie for children and children alone - and wonder what on earth it's doing on laserdisc. I have three observations.

Firstly, although children love it, there are plenty of adults (this writer included) who are completely gaga about this extraordinary movie, which is indubitably for adults as well as kids.

Secondly, why not have titles children can watch on LD - why shouldn't they enjoy home cinema's most enjoyable medium along with the rest of us.

Thirdly, in addition to being a superb adaptation of a great book (Gloucestershire-born children's author Dick King-Smith's The Sheep-Pig), it's a great piece of sheer cinema - you'll be as amazed in the nineties by the talking, live action animals as early cinemagoers were when the Lumiere brothers terrified audiences with (images of) oncoming trains hurtling towards their seats.

In King-Smith's hilarious fable, Farmer Hogget's sole piglet Babe decides to become a sheepdog. Hardly groundbreaking - we've read tales about talking animals before. For that matter, we've seen films with talking animals before - many of the better ones made by Disney (whose lamentable absence in the PAL LD market is all the more infuriating given the superb DS sound quality of Disney animation).

Babe, however, was made by an Australian production company about as different from Disney as it's possible to imagine: Kennedy-Miller's pedigree includes Mad Max, Dead Calm and The Year My Voice Broke. Their incredible coup is, quite simply, the conceit of flawlessly showing us animals talking in live action. Babe surely deserves to go down in the annals of film history alongside such groundbreaking efforts as King Kong, Star Wars, Roger Rabbit and even (if you stop to think about it) Jurassic Park - it has a better script than the former three and it isn't even American!

Nor does the movie shirk from such difficult King-Smith passages as where the farmer points his gun barrel at the pig he (wrongly) believes to have worried some sheep; the screen version even manages to tackle additional, darker material not found in the book by motivating Babe's progression towards Sheep-Pigdom out of his ever-present fear of the butcher's hook.

This remarkable Australian coup is pulled off with a mix of real animals and animatronics, the latter courtesy of various effects houses including Jim Henson's much-lauded Creature Workshop. Fine performances from James Cromwell and Magda Szubanski (as Farmer and Mrs. Hoggett, scripted with an inexplicable extra 't') and a sterling voice cast (including Hugo Weaving and Miriam Margolyes) don't do any harm either. But it's really the animals - or rather the film-makers' manipulation of them and their special effects counterparts within a well-told story - that steal the show. A masterpiece and (a rare double, this) genuine fun for both sexes and all ages.

if a widescreen video
were available
it wouldn't provide
even the slightest competition
for this fantastic disc

So far, you'll notice, I've hardly mentioned laserdisc. But this is a great disc for a number of reasons.

Perhaps because Universal consider it merely a children's film, there are no plans for a widescreen PAL VHS release - so if you want to own a widescreen Babe, this LD is a must. And Babe is much, much better in widescreen.

Compositionally, the full 1.85:1 area is used when, for instance, two dogs herd two separate streams of sheep across a field into a pen. And Farmer Hoggett's little improvised jig round his farmhouse interior (to the tune of If I Had Words) loses a great deal in fullscreen, where his hands and feet constantly disappear out of frame. The scene of Babe and a renegade duck friend dwarfed by the farmhouse interior is considerably more effective in widescreen simply because the farmhouse interior looks bigger than in the cropped fullscreen version (where the dramatic impact is sorely undercut).

If a widescreen video were available, however, it wouldn't provide even the slightest competition for this fantastic disc. The detail is stunning - straw, blades of grass, animal hair, all the furnishings in the farmhouse interior (including Hoggett's scale model house) are tailor-made for LD, while (as you might expect) the incredible performances coaxed from the mixture of live animals, animatronics and other trickery look (and sound) superb. The VHS Babe looks, frankly, lacklustre by comparison - seeing one after the other (e.g. in a showroom) provides a truly excellent demo of everything that's good about LD over VHS tape.

Likewise, the movie is tailor-made for chaptering, since the whole is divided up by fade (or iris) outs to black which then fade (or iris) into new scenes, and Pioneer have done themselves proud here, with chapters starting in black and fading in where applicable (which is a lot of the time).

Actually, they've done better than that, since Babe is punctuated by wonderful little title cards voiced-over by choruses of high-pitched, English speaking (squeaking?) mice who often appear briefly in little irises on another part of the screen and these would provide the perfect opening of a number of chapters. And yes, every one of these title cards comes at the beginning of a new chapter. Whoever made the decisions on this at Pioneer deserves to be congratulated (well done that person!) - it adds a great deal to the enjoyment of an already impressive disc.

The sound, while no particular detail springs to mind, is nice and crisp. And finally, the trailer (included as a nice little extra after the end credits) is not only in widescreen but looks and sounds every bit as good as the rest of the disc. Which is saying a great deal. All in all, this is a great disc, very reasonably priced and a 'must have' for any collection - or a good first disc for anyone looking to start one.

Being a great film in the first place helps Babe considerably, but Pioneer's production job more than measures up.

Film 5/5
Picture 5/5
Sound 5/5

Review copyright © Jeremy Clarke, 1996.