MovieChat Forums > Babe: Pig in the City (1998) Discussion > Dear Lord...

Dear Lord...

posted 19 years ago by FemaleOrca
23 replies | jump to latest

Babe is one of my favorite films of all time. And i questioned whether or not I should even give the sequel a chance. But when it came in a bundle with the original film, I finally decided to give it a look.

HOLY *beep*
Did anyone expect this? This film was so horrifically dark I found my self staring at the screen with my mouth wide open, wondering what kind of dark experimental mastermind was behind this?

SPOILERS....

A dog hanging upside down underwater drowning?
A little puppy explaining that his human wrapped him in a bag and threw him in the river?
Babe having flashbacks of his birth in subliminal single-frames as he runs in slow motion a way from a furious dog?
A back alley Doberman discussing the idea of suicide?

My god, the man who took the reigns of this franchise took them hard and never looked back. HE made a masterpeice of truth, absurdity, and fear. I appluade him to no end.

This is all not mentioning the scene in which a child cancer unit of a hospital is burned down by a clown and his band of monkeys. I cant get the image of the clown lying on the carpet with the sprinkler system pouring on him in slow motion.

bravo....

[–] funkyfry 19 years ago

I agree with you, it's an incredible film. The guy who directed it is the same guy who made the "Mad Max" movies I believe (although there are 2 George Millers from Australia, it gets so confusing that I heard once a producer hired the wrong one and didn't know it until after his film was completed!). I mean, when you have a warm and fuzzy franchise, what makes you say "hey, let's get the guy who did 'Mad Max' to do the sequel"? Whoever decided to do that should either be shot or knighted, depending on your perspective. I really enjoy the film, so it's clear where I stand.

Did I not love him, Cooch? MY OWN FLESH I DIDN'T LOVE BETTER!!! But he had to say 'Nooooooooo'

[–] bethell-nyc 19 years ago

Love it or hate it, can we at least agree that it's not appropriate for young children?

[–] rainybklynight 19 years ago

Not appropriate for young children? Dear Lord, what have you been smoking? Do you want humane children or mindless Power Rangers ones?

[–] funkyfry 19 years ago

I think it depends on what you mean by "young". I think I'd probly wait till my kids are over 5 or 6 because there's some scary stuff in it. But you could still consider an 8 year old a young kid, and I would consider this movie appropriate for anyone past the 1st grade basically.

Did I not love him, Cooch? MY OWN FLESH I DIDN'T LOVE BETTER!!! But he had to say 'Nooooooooo'

[–] woodruss 19 years ago

This is my kids' favorite movie, and they are 4 and 2. You want a scary movie for kids? Pinocchio. Freaked me out. Just to think of those kids turning into donkeys forever scared the bejeebers out of me! I also might add that this movie is a cinematic and storytelling masterpiece.

[–] funkyfry 19 years ago

Exactly, I think people are forgetting the real roots of horror stories and faerie stories are one and the same. The Grimm's faerie tales are a good example. This film reminded me in a lot of ways of "Time Bandits" which I saw in the theater when it came out, I was probably about 6. That movie changed my way of seeing the world. I always wanted to be on an adventure after that. And the ending really scared me (don't want to give any spoilers away, but anyone who's seen it knows what I'm talking about). Some people said "Time Bandits" is not good for kids, but I think it's a great kid's movie and so is "Babe: Pig in the City". Kids aren't as stupid as we adults sometimes think they are. I don't know how we think that, given that we once WERE kids and we hated the fact that adults talked down to us, but still most modern kid's movies are really dumbed down.

Did I not love him, Cooch? MY OWN FLESH I DIDN'T LOVE BETTER!!! But he had to say 'Nooooooooo'

[–] ratgirlagogo 19 years ago

The George Miller who directed this is the same George Miller who co-wrote and co-produced the original Babe (and yes, he's the Mad Max guy). The dark stuff is there in the first Babe, anyway - Babe's mother marching into the meat truck in the OPENING SCENE, while Babe squeaks "bye......Mom"

[–] peter-1700 18 years ago

Geoge Miller is a genius.

How horrified do you think the studio execs were when they saw what this film would be like?

How much pressure do you think would have been applied to redo it to be the same as Babe ?

Proof of his integrity that he must have told them all to go and get farked.

More power to him............

[–] deadpanwalking-1 16 years ago

Hahaha, yeah, I can see the studio execs watching the first cut of this movie and canceling their yacht orders and trying to come up with a way to stage the director's untimely death.

[–] joanna164 14 years ago

it is weird both babe movies were favorites of mine when i was a kid....the original coming out when i was 9 or 10 and the sequel when i was 12 or 13...i saw both in the movie theater and i own bot hon vhs.....and i remember likeing them both ALOT. however i remember watcign the sequel a lot more over and over. (i think i watched the original a lot too) but i remember watching the sequel later on in later years (after all i was 12 or 13 when it came out)and not bothering with goign backand watchign the original. so always in my mind i thought i liekd the sequel better.

now i am 24 and i just watched the original for old times sake because i was feeling sentimental and i had caught it on flipping channels a few weeks ago so i was liek "why don't i sit down and watch this"......and i fell in love with it all over again.

what i realized is i like the original much better. so as a 12,13,14(i guess) year old i liekd the seuel better but now lookign back i se the original was a much better movie. the spig in the city was really dark and i don't think i got that..i dont think it was bad all together but it felt like a completely different babe than the first one....and i think they didnt even ened a seqel actually. i don't know i take them as two seperate movies looking at them now ...because they kind of have nothing in common whatsoever....i may watch the sequel now to see what i get out of it but just remembering the way the characters where in that ...it was so different...i liek it but its not the feelings i get from Babe....i think thye are both good though and i will def try to get them on dvd someday for own kids....but i do like the first one better.

[–] kaelling 13 years ago

I totally agree with you OP. This film is way underrated considering what it really is. Not only was I gobsmacked and completely taken away by the way it was filmed, the story in itself and how they could make something so gloomy so heartwarming also. It is a dark film but it's not a dark film for the sake of being dark as for example alot of Burtons films are. It was colourful, hilarious, beautiful and generally well put together yet still managed to be dark!

The scene with the dog makes me cry. The compassion that little pig has! And the music is just perfect throughout this film also.

I gotta say, I was always a big fan of the first babe film but personally I believe this is way better. And how often does it happen that the sequal outdoes the original? Yay for George Miller! This film is a pearl and it's a good job a few of us know exactly why so it gets the praise it deserves.

Soph.

[–] andymck 18 years ago

I just happened to see this movie when i was five. I thought it was genious then and i still do. I own the film on dvd, and i personally feel that if your gonna rent your kids a child's film, then make it one of taste, not Bamby or Robbin Hood, Babe: Pig in The City is just the thing a child needs to be exposed to as a young child. A film like this benefits to a young child's future intellectuality and that is a GOOD thing.

[–] deadpanwalking-1 17 years ago

Hahahaha, awesome review.

[–] BethH24 15 years ago

There was dark stuff in the original too-Rex attacking Fly,seeing a close up of " ma " the sheep when she is dead !,Babe and ferdinand worrying about whether one of them was going to get eaten at Christmas,e.t.c.

[–] 15 years ago

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[–] annmintz-1 15 years ago

GOOD HEAVENS!!!

I remember growing up watching Babe and it was one of my absolute favorites. Then I remember seeing the sequel and remembering that it was HORRIBLE, but I literally do not remember ANYTHING about this movie. After reading your post, I am truly convinced that the movie was so horrible that I blocked it from memory after seeing it.

[–] RoamingTigress 14 years ago

This movie freaks me out everytime I see it - in a good way - and I love it :D It's an intelligent movie.

~The Unofficial Ricardo Antonio Chavira Fanclub~
http://tinyurl.com/9mb6hf

[–] tia_fish 13 years ago

FemaleOrca- I could not agree more. This is my first time watching this movie and I was absolutely horrified. Almost sick. A drowning dog? Seriously? I wanted to remove the disc from the player, snap it in half, and toss it in the garbage. I will never watch it again.

When Babe first got to the city, I thought the movie had a lot of potential. It just all went downhill from there. It's too bad, really. The animals are great, and there are so many of them, but the violence was just too much to handle.

[–] AnyMate 13 years ago

It's definitely not for everyone. Anyone who needs everything to be nice and turn out perfect will not like it. But then, life is not like that, and that's exactly why I like the movie as much as I do - it's not nice and perfect. I watch it with my kids all the time, and they understand it perfectly. It's actually a great instructional tool for teaching kids about life.

Let me ask you, do you watch Disney movies? It's a well known fact that in Disney movies something really bad happens in the first 5-10 minutes.

Ah well. Different strokes.

[–] 13 years ago

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