The Cute Little Red-Haired Girlfriend (CLRHG) and I saw Babe: Pig in the City on DVD this weekend. The film was darker than either of us expected, although I remember the original Babe being a bit on the macabre side, too, what with the whole "about-to-be-eaten-by-humans" theme. This same theme also loomed large in the animated pics The Little Mermaid and Chicken Run. I suppose it is cousin to the "about-to-be-made-into-coats" theme that energizes "101 Dalmations," and more distantly related to the "about-to-be-target practice" theme of Bambi. I sense a future book topic here.
Babe is famous for the technology that was developed to make the animals' mouths move in a realistic manner. I've always been somewhat in awe of the way animated films represent human speech through a limited palette of facial expressions. It seems even more incredible in stop-action animation, where numerous heads or mouths are fabricated and then interchanged during filming. Yesterday I ran across a low-tech, Flash version of mouth-moving animation that I found particularly enjoyable the other day: I recommend it to you.