Charlotte's Web
Dakota Fanning

I still remember it as if it was yesterday. I must have been three or four years old when I was traumatized. I remember the hours and hours of tears, the kind of sobbing where you cannot catch your breath. What caused this kind of reaction? A very bad movie starring William Holden, deep into his alcoholism and near the end of his career, called The Christmas Tree. It was the kind of movie that throws every thing but the kitchen sink at you and then is still looking for anything else they can chuck. Holden played an aging father whose ten-year-old son is dying of leukemia after being exposed to radiation from a bomb while swimming with his father in the ocean. The father wants to make sure his little boy gets everything he ever wanted, even stealing a couple of wolves from the zoo because the boy likes those cute cuddly wolves. On Christmas day, the father goes downstairs and finds that the little boy is lying still underneath the Christmas tree. At first it appears that the child is just sleeping, but it soon becomes clear that the boy has lost his war against cancer. William Holden, clutching the dead body of his son as soft piano music pipes up in the background, results in instant tears from a child too young to understand emotional manipulation. It was a Red Sovine song put on film. I cried tears that I did not even know that I had, the kind of crying where you start to sweat. If I had a time machine, I would love to stand next to my father as my father, in his Norwegian way, tried to understand and deal with this thing coming out of his son called emotion. I would ask him, “What were you thinking?”
I sometimes suspect, if truth be told, it is a lot of suppressed hostility. If parents were honest, some conversations would go something like this. “Little one, you are so sweet, slopping that drink box around like that. Mommy has a real treat for her little one. Once upon a time, your mommy used to have a flat tummy and perky breasts,  then I rented out a room inside of me for nine months. You’re going to watch a very special movie called Bambi, enjoy.” “Boy, you know that your daddy used to have a cherry sports car. I used to go out every weekend, money in the bank account, and a full head of hair, then you were born. Daddy had to buy a SUV, and mommy didn’t want to give me that special hug that she used to give me three or four times a week because someone is in the next room. Look! Old Yeller is on cable. Let’s watch.” “Baby Doll, it was so nice of you to make that nice drawing with your crayons on the wall and that cookie in the VCR was a nice touch. As a reward, someone gets to watch Brian’s Song with their daddy.” “I want to thank you for throwing yourself on the ground and screaming at the top of your lungs like that in the store. So, I stopped by the video store and got you a great little film called Where the Red Fern Grows.” “That was really cute when you told Aunt Julie what mommy called her, when mommy and daddy were talking privately. Guess who gets to watch The Velveteen Rabbit?” I still remember being eight years old watching the television movie Something For Joey, and bawling as John Cappelletti stood on the Heisman platform, the greatest college player in the nation, and then with tears streaming down his face came the words, "My brother Joseph is ill. He has leukemia. They say I've shown courage on the football field, but for me it's only on the field, and only in the fall. Joey lives with pain all the time. His courage is round the clock. I want him to have this trophy. It's more his than mine, because he's been such an inspiration to me." Whether it is Dumbo’s mother rocking her child with her trunk, Simba going down for the count in The Lion King, a dog named Fluke seeing his family again, or Little Nemo losing his mommy, children’s movies are often an emotional boot camp, none more so than Charlotte’s Web. Everyone who has seen it knows what I am talking about.
The 1973 animated movie and the classic story by E.B. White are a big part of almost everyone’s childhood. Harry Potter be damned. It is still the best selling children’s book of all time. In the cartoon, Wilbur, was voiced by the guy who was the head Nazi in The Blues Brothers. Charlotte sounded little like Princess Leia’s pill popping mama and, if you closed your eyes, Templeton the rat could almost be mistaken for that funny gay guy in the center box of Hollywood Squares. As the children who grew up watching it, now have children of their own, Hollywood knows what wells to drill, what emotional attachment to exploit. With modern CGI and the box office success of Scooby Doo, it was only a matter of time before studio executives turned a longing eye towards the pork chop called Charlotte’s Web for a live action version. Enter Dakota Fanning (Man on Fire, Dreamer, War of the Worlds), the impossibly cute muppet who looks like a Nazi eugenics experiment and will in a decade probably have a two hour E Hollywood True Story devoted to her. She is Fern Arable, the little girl who owns Wilbur. A who’s who of A-list celebrities provides the voices including Reba McEntire (Betsy), Jennifer Garner (Susy), Cedric the Entertainer (Golly), Robert Redford (Ike),Thomas Haden Church (Brooks), John Cleese (Samuel), Kathy Bates (Bitsy), Steve Buscemi (Templeton), Oprah Winfrey (Gussy),and Julia Roberts (Charlotte). Everyone knows Wilbur’s story. He was born the runt of the litter and Fern saves him from an early demise at her father’s hands. When he gets old enough, he is taken to the Zuckerman farm where he will be killed at the end of the season and be turned into a tasty sandwich. In the rafters of his new dwelling is a barn spider named Charlotte A. Cavatica who begins to scheme of a way to save his life. She lets the humans know how special this swine is by spinning a web that proclaims “Some Pig.” (Now in the real world, Mr. Zuckerman would have put Charlotte in a jar and sold her on Ebay. Then enjoyed his wealth by gorging on Wilbur’s ribs at the local barbecue shack, but this is a movie.) Fans of the story know where things go from there.
Now, in my opinion the 1973 film is better. There is something about animation that always helps a tale like this to be a little more believable. (Kind of how the bad animation of South Park makes the series more hilarious than if they used more realistic representations of 10-year-old boys swearing.) Hopefully, the success of this film will lead to a duplex DVD version of the original. Still, this new version is enjoyable. Will this version send children home in tears? Does it end the same way as the original?

Verdict: A Nice Children’s Film