Babe: Horror on the Farm

I should have known something was wrong with the film when the previews included a Dakota Fanning flick. Why did no tell me that Babe is a horror movie?!?

The opening credits rolled past not only a gut-split hog in wood but also animatronic pigs kicking in a conga line. Somewhere in my amygdala, evil monkeys banged their cymbals. I almost turned the movie off when the Nazis showed up, but I was exercising (best not to stop once you start!) and I thought “How bad could it really be?” This blog post is directed at the silent millions out there who, like me, watched the first five minutes of Babe with a look of horror plastered across their face.

In short, THE ANIMALS SPEAK TO EACH OTHER. By default, this means that Babe is terrifying. I can’t stand those calendars with behatted babies lounging in buttercups. I have to look away from the TV when that talking E*Trade ten-month-old comes on. No way can my post-monkey brain developed over 200,000 years of evolution on the African plain handle the possibility that not only will a lion leap out of the brush to kill me, but he will talk to me first.

My home contains other movies. I could have simply sent this porker back to Netflix and gotten another movie in three days, but I could not look away. I freely admit that peeking through my fingers at horror movies like Babe is not my only shortcoming, but such behavior is one of the few to induce hyper-alertness when I should be sleeping (dark-chocolate binges at midnight aside). But soon, the image of what can only be called “Farmer Hoggett fleeing Atlanta” filled the screen, and I persevered in the belief that the fools who did not get the joke would soon be shown it by the clever Babe director, Christopher Noonan.

Sadly, not only did I finish watching the movie and see no big reveal, but I searched the internet afterward, and it appears I’m the only one who gets the joke. My solitary, untweeted superiority on the subject is no solace. As a bandaid for my feelings, below I memorialize Babe’s most outrageous quotes:

• “What you eat today walks and talks tomorrow.” What? I can only guess the director was referring to the wave of cannibalistic necromancy (a.k.a. zombies) that swept the Australian farming community in 1994.
• “Be ruthless. Whatever it takes. Bend them to your will.” That was from a talking sheepdog. Don’t let them fool you. Purebred herding animals all have a Master of Science in Malevolence from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. The degree is granted by Madison’s no-longer-secret Department of Evil Intentions and Knitting.
• “Beware the bad cat bearing a grudge.” I take issue with that on two counts. One, there is no such things as a “bad” cat. “Bad” is a matter of erroneous interpretation predicated upon the inability of a mere human, dog, pig or talking goat to understand that a cat’s every action is a sign of divine genius. Two, cats would never bear a grudge. (See the explanation above about every feline’s inherent divinity.)
• “Christmas is carnage!” Okay. Hard to argue with that. The duck is right. And I’m not just talking about the actions of meatatarians. I’m talking about the nuclear explosion and resultant despoilation that is the intersection of December 25^th and family obligations!

I strongly suggest posterity rename this movie Babe: Horror on the Farm!

In closing,*  Baa Ram Ewe is a lie! Real world pigs are never the heroes!