Rating: 
Summary: My all time favorite movie
Review: This movie is astounding in so many ways. The filming is gorgeous and surreal - very painterly. The acting is so believable that when I saw it the first time, I felt that the chimp should get an academy award and then I remembered that he was an animal - totally suspended belief there!But most importantly, the message of the movie is one that really took root in my heart - I strive to be as brave and honorable as Babe (with mixed results, I admit). I am a sophisticated movie watcher and no one believes me when I say that Babe, Pig in the City, is my favorite movie. It's that good.
Rating: 
Summary: Entertaining
Review: I didn't like this one as much as the first one, which I tend to watch again after a year or so. The first one is definately on the "need to own" list, but I don't feel as strongly about the second film.
It's still a fun to watch family movie, and I do recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: "Ferdinand the Duck - Witness to Insanity!"
Review: Just before he passed away, Gene Siskel made this his best picture of the year. I just watched this movie again and enjoyed it more this time than I remembered. Babe has a unique visual quality that this movie takes to another level. The representation of the Metropolis is fairly amazing.
In this movie we get a fable more about the animals than the people. Farmer Hoggett appears only in the beginning and end and Mrs. Hoggett has the job of delivering the pig to the city and taking him back home while providing some determined comic relief (as she did in the first movie). Mickey Rooney has an amazingly touching almost-a-cameo role, as well.
I think of this as a fable with the animals and shows how approaching a harsh and hopeless situation with a good heart (such as Babe's) can transform it into something livable and meaningful. Ferdinand seeking out Babe to be with his Luck Pig is a very neat sub-story that provides some great laughs as well. I found the scene where Flealick is thrown hard from his bite on the captors' truck and ends up in a broken heap to be quite touching. His semi-conscious dream of being whole again and leaping for butterflies is just right.
You either like Babe's sweetness or you don't. I do. When he is sent to face his doom with the Doberman and the Pit Bull because he is told they are sheep he tries to handle it with what he knows and what he is told. Still, when it all goes bad he does his level best to survive and when he does, he goes back to rescue his tormentor. Nice stuff.
Probably the lackluster reaction to the movie came more from its split character as a slapstick comedy (when Mrs. Hoggett reclaims Babe at the formal dinner in the clown suit) and as a somewhat grim morality play (when the animals struggle to survive on their own and their capture and escape from the authorities). Such intensity mixed with a stack of champagne glasses at risk can confuse.
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