CHARLOTTE'S WEB

By Christopher Rice

E.B. White’s classic tale of friendship comes to the screen with a powerfully well adapted punch for movie-going audiences. Dakota Fanning delivers another excellent performance including both Fern’s strong and childish sides to her character. As seen in many movies through out the years, Dakota has brought to characters to life by, what seems to be, being herself and allowing her self to enjoy the moments of the written material – a skill necessary to writers, directors, and actors.

Wilbur the pig, proves to be a truly spectacular pig though I thought the filmmakers went over the top for a split second as the pig completed a back flip in front of a crowd of people. The pig is made of both a live animal actor and state of the art CGI. In fact this might be the first CGI pig audiences have seen sliding around in mud.

The material was just as powerful as the original children’s book due to the well adapted screenplay by Susannah Grant and Karey Kirkpatrick. The writing was the main driver of the original themes of friendship, love, and faith. E.B. White created a world within a world with the personalities of the barnyard animals participating including the vile, Templeton, voiced by Steve Buscemi, and the misunderstood Charlotte, voiced by Julia Roberts.

This film goes to prove that a good couple of themes combined with a ticking clock and characters with conflicting views will always provide as an insightful and entertaining story to audiences. The one thing that stuck out in this movie as icky to me was that the story fell into a bit of a repetition when Charlotte realized that she needed to provide a better word for Wilbur in order to communicate the message to the people that Wilbur shouldn’t be slaughtered for Christmas. This of course, is driven by the premise and themes of the story and wouldn’t work with out it.

It’s a very enjoyable story, although ending on a happy note, the audience struggles to enjoy the catharsis due to the powerful impact of Charlotte’s death moments before. The film is full of universal themes as well as sub-themes such as “letting go” seen when Wilbur accepts that Charlottes gone and Fern’s mother letting Fern go off with the boy during the fair.

This is one for the whole family and something everyone can enjoy both as a family and friends.