‘Charlotte’s Web’ a familiar but pleasant adaptation

I can’t remember now if I read E.B. White’s “Charlotte’s Web” back in grade school, but whether or not I did, it is Hanna-Barbera’s animated feature film version that has stuck with me. It illustrates the same lessons as the book—it gave my young self a bitter pang of realization concerning the full breadth of mortality.

In retrospect, the ever-present threat of the axe hanging over its porcine hero Wilbur and its denouement of deep loss and cherishing the smallest consolations strikes me as an important time in my life, when I realized I needed make the most out of what I had. Difficult but vital lessons for a kid, and all the better that we’ve got another vessel for them in a new “Charlotte’s Web.”

Narrated by Sam Shepard (his homey omniscience giving him a creepy Waylon Jennings vibe), this new version of “Charlotte’s Web” starts as an innocent little girl, Fern, (Dakota Fanning, officially incapable of playing an innocent little girl) rescues the runt of the new pig litter from her father’s stable from a quick death. Time goes on, and the pig (now dubbed “Wilbur” and played by Dominic Scott Kay) eventually grows too large to be cared for, so Wilbur is shunted off to live with Fern’s Uncle Homer (Gary Basaraba) at the nearby farmhouse. The only barn animal willing to pay the young pig any mind is Charlotte A. Cavatica (Julia Roberts), a spider shunned by the rest of barn for her “ew” factor. Although Wilbur believes he has all the time in the world to win over everyone else, Templeton the Rat (Steve Buscemi) is quick to remind him that spring pigs only see Christmas except as the main course. As a means to stay the execution, Charlotte offers her web-spinning talents as a scribe to describe and prove to the humans that Wilbur is more than just a potential dinner.

I admit a genuine pleasure in revisiting the world of “Charlotte’s Web,” simply for the opportunity to compare experiences with the hazy half-memories of my youth. Of course, the one thing that always bothered me as a kid was this idea that people would go for the pig instead of engaging in a frantic search for the spider that apparently knows the English language. Well, even though I clearly missed a line explaining that the spider was “nowhere to be found,” it’s about the metaphor, stupid; Charlotte’s actions are always meant to highlight Wilbur exclusively as a way to dig our heads out of the sand and appreciate what we have in our friends and loved ones, a lesson that eventually dominoes its way through all the characters. (Revisiting the Hanna-Barbera version, I finally understood the reason for my childhood incomprehension: while the message about mortality was still palpable, the “friendship” and “appreciation” concept was somewhat done in by its distracting musical numbers.) This time around, however, I saw how White (and by extension, director Gary Winick) had a real appreciation for the vital link between artist, critic and audience. Through her own “good writing,” Charlotte forces the humans to better understand the wonderful creatures (such as Wilbur) that permeate our artistic landscape. After a year of “Lady in the Water,” “Stick It” and “Date Movie,” it’s nice to see a film that recognizes and appreciates criticism. Or maybe I’m just a narcissist, I don’t know.

My worst gripe is the choice of using celebrities rather than professional voice actors to play animated characters. Robert Redford is unrecognizably bland as a horse; Oprah Winfrey is aggressively mediocre as a goose; and Julia Roberts nearly ruins everything by giving a bored, boring performance as Charlotte. On the bright side, it’s good to know that she’s successfully defending her title as the most overrated actress in the history of the moving image. Still, there are a few random pleasures to be found in the cast: to say that Steve Buscemi is preferrable to Paul Lynde as Templeton is really no more useful than saying that actual comedy is preferable to kitsch, but Buscemi’s weaselly delivery really is a delight.

Not much else you can say about it, really. Despite the fact that the film is stupidly laced with fart jokes, and that Roberts’ nearly unwilling reading of Charlotte makes the character seem a little more of an elitist snob than a valuable educator (maybe that “critic” theory is less benign than I thought), the rest of the script makes up for it all. I realized while seeing the same story thrown up there on the big screen, years after I had seen it on the small one, that perhaps this story is a generational thing meant to be rejuvenated every few decades. Sure, it’s always been available as a book, but maybe we need this kind of public revitalization to remind us that the story is still there and willing to teach a new batch of kids about life. In comparison to the other incarnations, Gary Winick’s “Charlotte’s Web” isn’t a consolation prize.