Charlotte’s Web
You’re born, you live and you die. It’s the natural cycle of life. — Charlotte A. Cavatica
Are you listening, Darren Aronofsky? With this pithy, mature sentiment, a movie about the friendship between a talking pig and a talking spider sends “The Fountain” spiraling into irrelevance. I can only imagine that Aronofsky didn’t read “Charlotte’s Web” as a kid. Either that or he was so upset by Charlotte’s death that he started imagining elaborate, time-hopping schemes to save her.
Point is, “Charlotte’s Web” is lovely, in book and movie form, and it teaches kids tough lessons about the transience of life with honesty and grace. Charlotte (voiced with sass and wisdom by Julia Roberts) is the spider, and Wilbur (Dominic Scott Kay) is the pig whom she saves from the smokehouse by spinning words into her web, pointing out to his human minders how extraordinary he is. A few showoffy digital effects aside, director Gary Winick doesn’t try to fix what ain’t broken; he captures the gentle but honest tone of the original. I loved how Fern (a superb, low-key Dakota Fanning) pretty much forgets about Wilbur after she gets interested in boys, bringing to mind the prescient words of the town doctor (Beau Bridges), who assures Fern’s mother (Essie Davis) that her devotion to the pig is a phase — one that, sadly, she’ll grow out of.
Most of the attention will go to the all-star voice cast (in addition to Roberts we get Oprah Winfrey, John Cleese, Robert Redford, Kathy Bates and Steve Buscemi, to name a few), but Winick has cast the live-action performers with equal care. Davis and Kevin Anderson, as Fern’s father, mix clear-eyed parental affection with just the right notes of skepticism and frustration.
The engine of E.B. White’s book remains intact, as Winick wrings genuine suspense from the question of what word Charlotte will spin into her web next. Among other things, “Charlotte’s Web” could inspire a love affair with the English language, thanks to Charlotte’s gentle pedantry. (There’s a mild paradox here: Charlotte has a better vocabulary than any of the other animals, yet she relies on Templeton the rat (Buscemi) to find scraps of paper with words she can use to describe Wilbur. Perhaps it’s a ploy to better integrate Templeton into barnyard society, which she does successfully. Whatever — it’s not worth agonizing over.)
This “Charlotte’s Web” will make hearts beat quicker and bring moisture to arid tear ducts. That’s pretty remarkable, given that you’re watching a pig talk to a spider.