Just finished watching Charlotte’s Web and I don’t know how to feel about it. I had heard that it was a sorta darker film for children and I’m coming to it after having watched Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio last week, also never read the book.

Well, I don’t know how to feel about it. At one side I am crushed by the ending and the fact that again, it’s a children’s musical film being honest to earth about realities of life and making peace with it. One of the most affecting scenes for me was when one of the goose mother’s eggs doesn’t hatch and she just gives him to the rat to eat or whatever, I have never seen that kind of accepting attitude to life and death in a movie. Both this and Pinocchio talk differently about death of course but Charlotte’s Web has a more “cycle of life” and just a physical nature feel to it that seems to cement how inevitable death is.

The musical numbers I enjoyed as well, the best one for me in terms of nuance was how when they sing about what’s similar in all the animals and the writer’s basically explain convergent evolution so clearly that I found it really cool.

The animation looks old but I didn’t mind it that much, it’s been a long time since I have seen a Tom & Jerry cartoon so it was really nice to go back visually to those simpler times though the movie really doesn’t look too bad, the animation is wonderfully detail to convey emotions and story through the detailed backgrounds even using some different techniques like in Templeton’s gluttony music scene.

Now this is where the movie trips me and doesn’t make sense. I don’t like Wilbur much, his central story has a threat and problem but he doesn’t solve it or even do anything other than moan and whine which makes him unlikable compared to Charlotte for me and because the main story belong’s to him and not Charlotte, I feel like I can’t recommend the movie to someone without being honest about it and saying that the main plot is good as an overarching plot with all characters involved and not as one story about a pig trying to avoid death. The movie is about the later plot and sells it but it’s not a particularly well excecuted plot in itself.

That’s why it hurts my brain, but I do like it.