Babe: Pig in the City

It is more of a wonderment, lolling in its enchanting images--original, delightful and funny. Read full review

Don’t miss this astonishingly bleak, inventive, funny, sumptuously designed film. Read full review

Babe: Pig in the City is tour de force filmmaking that masks its achievement in a good ripping yarn. Read full review

For older kids and adults, it's an amazing piece of work, far more complex in its talking-animal effects and far more ambitious in design than the first film. Read full review

Pig in the City has been designed with the goal of recapturing the enchanting feel of the original while taking the story in new and different directions. It succeeds at both aims, standing as a worthy sequel to one of the decade's most innovative family features. Read full review

It's refreshing that a family movie dares to be as emotionally charged as this one, but you wish Miller had paused before he piled everything on and said to himself, "That'll do." Read full review

The entire production is vaguely unsettling. That, in fact, is one of the most engaging things about Babe: Pig in the City. The imaginative art direction, economical editing and sculptural cinematography combine to make this movie one of the year's most distinctive-looking productions. Read full review

One of the strangest sequels of all time, director George Miller's wildly imaginative vision of animals loose in a dangerous urban dreamscape at times seems much closer to his work on the Mad Max series than to the bucolic charms of the original, which he produced but did not direct. [25 Nov 1998, p.1D]

Its main pluses are that it's imaginative and, at times, very funny. Its main drawbacks are too many humans and an overall tone that is much too dark and edgy for very young audiences. [27 Nov 1998, p.B3]

Quibbles aside, Babe: Pig in the City recaptures the verbal wit and plentiful heart that made the first film so special. [25 Nov 1998, p.2E]

As directed by the stupendously talented and aggressively eccentric George Miller (creator of Mad Max and producer of the first Babe), Pig in the City is far busier and faster than the original, which was directed by Chris Noonan. This has some benefits. [25 Nov 1998, p.D1]

In Babe: Pig in the City, the sunny mood of the Hoggett Farm has been supplanted by darker urban tones, suggesting the arrival of a new cinematic genre: Barnyard Noir. Read full review

There's a lot to like in this film. As in the original, it has more than a few echoes of Animal Farm in its portrayal of humanity as the exploiter species. It respects both its child audience, by permitting Babe and his sunny decency to win out, and its adult audience, by generating more wit than the average dozen Hollywood films.

Miller is going to take some heat for making this new film inhabit a cruel world. But better that than sugarcoating the story. He's found a way to recycle a popular film - choppily perhaps, episodically perhaps, but provocatively. [25 Nov 1998, p.C1]

Pig in the City has been designed with the goal of recapturing the enchanting feel of the original while taking the story in new and different directions. It succeeds at both aims, standing as a worthy sequel to one of the decade's most innovative family features. Read full review

This is hardly your same old trough of slop. Babe nonetheless prevails, demonstrating once again "how a kind and steady heart can heal a sorry world." Read full review

You couldn't have gotten a more pleasantly bizarre film if Salvador Dali himself had directed, which says a lot for Miller's rabid talents. Read full review

This little piggy's gone to market, and he isn't coming back. Not to suggest the sequel lacks heart or an uplifting message. It has both. But they've been subsumed in slapstick clowning and the introduction of characters with no reason to exist, other than to line the shelves of toy stores. [27 Nov 1998, p.6D]

A dark, violent film, it has undeniable visual power and sporadic moments of wit. There's quite a bit of fun, but it's not the cheery entertainment you might be hoping for from your favorite porker. [25 Nov 1998, p.D1]

Undeniably clever and inventive, Babe: Pig in the City has nevertheless sacrificed part of the freshness and buoyancy that made the original "Babe" so luminous. This sequel is more elaborate, more calculated and more self-consciously dark than its deservedly beloved predecessor. Read full review

Pig in the City is a blatant, heartless attempt to turn a surprise hit into a cash cow. That simply won't do, pig. [25 Nov 1998, p.1D]

While appealing as a pet show, as a movie, "Babe" is penned in by the lackadaisical story line and the film's grimy sensibilities. Despite the funny flourishes of the costumes and some sprightly animated figures and spunky effects, "Babe" is a pretty oppressive-feeling production. [25 Nov 1998]

As directed once again by George Miller, Babe remains a cute little porker, but his fanciful new backdrops are less beguiling. Read full review

Maybe it could have worked had the movie found a story worth telling, but it simply drifts from depressing incident to depressing incident, resembling the nightmare of an adorable but deeply emotionally scarred pig. Anyone with fond memories of Babe ought to avoid this mirthless, dispiriting sequel. Read full review

A desperate, pathetic mess. Read full review