Friday 9 February 2007
It's hard to go wrong with a cute liddle piggy, and so it proves in this adaptation of EB White's barnyard classic, squarely aimed at alleviating half-term boredom. It maintains a good deal of charm as it exploits that by-now-familiar Babe technique of lip-synching live-action animals - though that weirdest of movie moppets, Dakota Fanning, injects a note of unutterable strangeness, playing all her scenes with a rictus grin that presumably is intended to make us think she's a sweetie-pie. It doesn't work. The usual array of topline talent fill out the voices of the assorted cows, sheep and poultry; but it's the unlikely presence of Steve Buscemi, as the garbage-wallowing rat Templeton, that proves the most inspired choice. It's not quite in Babe's league, but then very little is.
