There [isn't] much zip to the script. But, shot by the late Andrew Lesnie... it always looks good.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 11, 2025

Much to my surprise, I found Babe charming in an eccentric, oddly tough-minded sort of way. And if it isn't quite good enough to change my mind about the entire critter-chat genre, it is certainly good enough to recommend.

| Jun 16, 2015

He's brave and bright, good-natured and ambitious, naive and vulnerable. All in all, he's probably the most winsome orphan to appear on the screen since Freddie Bartholomew impersonated David Copperfield 60 years ago.

| Aug 19, 2014

Thanks to well-trained live animals, clever voice characterizations and a big dash of muppetry from Henson's Creature Shop, Babe and his barnyard friends not only walk the walk and trot the trot, they also talk the talk.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 19, 2014

Here's the summer's sleeper for kids and their parents, a terrific picture that takes a lot of risks and makes them all pay off in a charming story about a pig who fancies himself a sheepdog -- or sheep-pig.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 19, 2014

Babe is not, strictly speaking, a kid's movie. It is a preposterously funny fable that strikes a chord with adults, too.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jul 30, 2013

For children, the movie will play like a storybook come to life. Adults, at first, will marvel at the special effects and puppetry. But ultimately, they'll be won over by the nuances of a story that finds a fresh way to deliver a timeless message.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 30, 2013

A film that is exceptional in its technical effects and its graceful ability to entertain.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jul 30, 2013

[It's] a comedy of animal manners that is much funnier and much cannier than any recent movie about human relationships: a lovely, stubbornly idiosyncratic fable of aspiration and survival.

| Jul 30, 2013

This reviewer for one, hasn't been able to face a pork chop in the months since, and is still laughing at the vibrant joyousness of this delicious comic fable.

| Original Score: 5/5 | May 13, 2008

It has a surprising charm.

| May 13, 2008

Australian director Chris Noonan and producer George Miller show what real talent and imagination can do, even without big-name humans as costars.

| Original Score: A | May 13, 2008

The characters (both animal and human) are solidly conceived, and the storytelling and visuals are expertly fashioned.

| May 13, 2008

Babe provides a stunning revisionist take on barnyard politics, and may change the whole way we view pigs politically.

| May 13, 2008

A dazzling family entertainment with enormous charm that utilizes breathtaking technical innovation.

Full Review | May 13, 2008

Its seemingly effortless synthesis of humor and pathos [is] almost as wonderful as is its ability to capture the sense of awe and fear that attends youth's initial exposure to the big wide world.

| Original Score: A- | Jan 24, 2007

Charming, eccentric and very amusing.

| Jan 26, 2006

One of the five greatest family films ever made. Possibly the best. Pure magic.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 10, 2005

A lovely, intelligent gem of G-rated entertainment that is also rib-tickling funny.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 18, 2002

Unlike subsequent talking-animal pictures, Babe is a movie in which the human leads matter as much as the animals, or more so.

| Original Score: A+ | May 8, 2002