Babe (1995)
★★½ — Babe (1995)
There are films you carry with you from childhood like a worn comfort blanket, and Babe is absolutely one of them. The memory of it is warm and soft and vivid. A little pig who wants to herd sheep. A quiet farmer who believes in him without making a fuss about it. Mice who sing. That's the film lodged in my head from thirty years ago, and for a long time I assumed revisiting it would feel like coming home.
It didn't, quite. And that's the honest truth of it.
What Babe gets gloriously right is its sincerity. There's no winking at the adults in the room, no cheap gags inserted to keep the parents awake. It treats its young audience as people capable of sitting with quiet emotion, and that's genuinely admirable. The practical effects are still impressive, too. Real animals, trained with what must have been extraordinary patience, moving through miniature sets built with tactile, handcrafted warmth. James Cromwell's Farmer Hoggett is a masterwork of economy, a man who communicates volumes through stillness and the occasional sparse line delivered like a small gift. The film's central argument, that you should be exactly who you are rather than what the world expects, lands with a simple, enduring charm.
But here's the thing I wasn't prepared for: watching it with kids raised on the relentless pace and visual noise of modern animation is a genuinely humbling experience. Not for them. For the film. The pacing is glacial by today's standards, the humour gentle to the point where more than once I glanced over to find young eyes glazing. The emotional beats are soft, careful, measured. When I was eight, that softness felt like being held. Now, seen through the eyes of children used to louder and brighter storytelling, it reads more like waiting.
That's not a criticism of the film exactly. It's a film of its moment, and its moment was real. What once felt quietly revolutionary now feels quietly quaint. The anthropomorphic animal story it helped popularise has since been refined, turbocharged, and rebuilt so many times over that Babe's version can feel almost skeletal by comparison. It's a bit like watching a magic trick after someone's explained how it works. You can still appreciate the craft. You just can't get the gasp back.
I kept thinking about what made it land so hard the first time, and I think it comes down to novelty and trust. Children in 1995 hadn't seen anything quite like it. The animals felt real, the world felt grounded, and the emotional simplicity felt profound rather than thin. That combination of wonder and sincerity doesn't date well when the wonder has been industrialised and the sincerity has been mimicked until it's nearly a cliché.
There's a companion piece worth thinking about here: I recently watched Bluey at the Cinema: Playdates with Friends, which showed me what genuine cross-generational storytelling looks like when it's firing on all cylinders. That thing lands for a four-year-old and a forty-year-old simultaneously, and the gap between that experience and this one says something about how the craft has evolved.
None of which makes Babe a bad film. It isn't. It's a good film that was briefly a great experience, and those two things aren't always the same. Cromwell deserves every good word ever written about him in this. The heart is genuine. The craftsmanship is real. I'm glad it exists, and I'm glad I grew up with it.
Two and a half stars. A nostalgic treasure that struggles, through no real fault of its own, to bridge the gap between then and now. Admire it. Just don't be surprised if the children beside you are less convinced than you'd hoped.
Rating: ★★½ | Year: 1995 | Watched: 2026-04-08
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Netflix · Sky Go · Netflix Kids · Now TV Cinema
Rent: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US
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More drama: Viy (1967) · Wonder (2017) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Beautiful Boy (2018)
