BABE: PIG IN THE CITY (66)

Directed by: George Miller

Starring: Magda Szubanski, Mary Stein, James Cromwell, the voice of E. G. Daily

The Pitch: Little pig, big city.

Theo Sez: Fans of the "magical" (actually rather thin and twee) original may disagree, but the rest of us can happily pig out on this baroque, turbo-charged sequel - even as we wonder what was going through the minds of those who made (and greenlighted) it. Set "a little to the left of the 20th century" and accompanying its action scenes with Verdi and Saint-Saens, this could never have been a major hit, not least because it can't quite keep the narrative momentum going : its porcine protagonist may define himself as "a pig on a mission" but the film is actually rather picaresque, more a matter of (sometimes overstretched) set-pieces of escalating comic chaos than any unifying "mission" (one thinks of it in terms of discrete chapters : the pit-bull chase, the hotel raid, the elastic climax). Its appeal isn't in how neat or satisfying it is but in how strange, not to say perverse : a grandiose film, visually elaborate, carefully designed in geometric patterns (vertical lines - towers, multi-storey interiors, simultaneous action on many floors - alternating with horizontals : chases, processions, etc.), yet putting its resources behind an angry, alienating worldview. Details range from the merely offbeat (the woman who talks by answering her own questions, very Roald Dahl) to the downright grotesque (the recurring figure of the pig-faced man), but what takes the breath away is the scornful bitterness towards all things showbiz, a tatty circus inhabited by big-city hustlers, pitted against Babe's "kind and steady heart" : surely not too fanciful, given Miller's chequered relationship with the studios, to read this tale of innocent animals vs. exploitative humans as applying also to 'pure' artists vs. money-grubbing corporations, with the sad figure of Thelonius, an over-humanised orangutang, standing in for all the artists who've sold out to the Man (and the city generally standing in for Hollywood, where innocence is corrupted). You almost feel sorry for those Universal execs who bought (yes!) a pig in a poke only to find this little number turning up - a film where mice sing Edith Piaf, pit-bulls wax philosophical, and the only villains are the "men in suits, with pale faces and soulless eyes". Oh dear.