Charlotte's Web (1973) Review

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well. The snow has almost completely melted and the weather is warmer than it was two weeks ago, but not as warm as it got last week. But still, it's kinda nice to have warmer weather now that it's late March. So last night I watched the 1973 animated classic, Charlotte's Web for the first time in thirty years and I'm here to talk about it. Let's get into it.

I feel like Charlotte's Web is a movie that people don't talk about much these days. Even when I watched it in the '90s I actually didn't know anybody who had seen it. I never forgot it, but last night was the first time I'd seen it in thirty years as we didn't own it.

 Based on the children's novel by E.B. White, which was originally published in 1952, the movie is about a pig named Wilbur and his friendship with a spider named Charlotte. Wilbur was born as the runt of his litter and was only saved initially because Fern, the daughter of Wilbur's original owner, John Arable, intervened. However, Wilbur ends up in danger again when it's realized that Farmer Zuckerman, Fern's uncle, who Wilbur is sold to, is raising Wilbur to be slaughtered. Charlotte decides to try to save Wilbur's life with the help of the barn's resident rat, Templeton. 

With last night being the first time that I'd seen Charlotte's Web in thirty years, there was so much of the movie that I didn't remember. In fact the only things I did remember were the barn animals, Fern, Wilbur, Charlotte (obviously), and Templeton and the song that Templeton and the Goose sing to convince Templeton to accompany Wilbur and Charlotte to the county fair, "A Veritable Smorgasbord", as well as the ending with Charlotte's children. But that's still not a whole lot given that it's a 1 hour and 34 minute movie. 

I think my favourite part of the movie is when Fern's brother, Avery, riles the animals up, and then falls in Wilbur's pig trough, smashing the rotten egg that Templeton had taken after the Goose's eggs had hatched. Being that this movie was produced by Hanna-Barbera, this scene reminded me of many comedic scenes similar to this in shows like The Flintstones, The Jetsons, and the various Scooby-Doo incarnations that we've had over the years. Not to mention the various incarnations of Super Friends. Which, with the exception of the Super Friends, the shows that I just mentioned are all ones I grew up watching reruns of when I was a kid in the '90s, around the time I first saw this movie.

I think the cast is spectacular. Though I'm not familiar with the work of anybody who was cast in this movie outside of it. They're all old school Hollywood actors or old school TV actors, which I'm just not as familiar with. However, I know Debbie Reynolds as Carrie Fisher's mother, so that's something at least.

Of course, the Sherman Brothers wrote the songs for the movie, so that's pretty cool. Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman are famous mainly for being involved in making the music for most of Disney's animated filmography of the '60s and '70s, as well as films such as Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and Bednobs and Broomsticks, as well as contributing a song for the 1967 Disney movie The Gnome-Mobile. When I was a kid, without knowing who the Sherman Brothers were, I ended up really liking the songs in this movie because they did remind me of many of the Disney movies that I was watching on VHS at the time. That would be because Disney's song writers wrote the songs for it, and I didn't even know it at the time.

Another interesting thing about Charlotte's Web is that I'm sort of familiar with the work of the film's screenwriter, Earl Hamner Jr. In case you don't know who he is, Earl Hamner Jr. was a novelist, TV writer and producer known for The Waltons (1972-1981), which was based on his 1961 novel, Spencer's Mountain. The Waltons was a show that my family watched reruns of all the time when I was a kid. Particularly in the summer where my siblings and I would play outside after dinner and then come in for The Waltons every day, Monday through Friday. That actually surprised me when I found out that he wrote this movie because there's a big difference between that show and this movie. Still though it's a fun little tidbit.

As I said earlier in this review, I didn't own this movie on any home media format growing up. However, my parents rented it for me quite often, in between episodes of Rainbow Brite, Disney's Sing-Along Songs tapes, Barney & The Backyard Gang tapes, and movies like Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory and Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird!. However, the last time I watched the movie before last night was back in 1992, prior to it's 1993 VHS re-release. 

I finally got it on DVD when my sister gave me the Charlotte's Web Collection DVD set for Christmas. It includes the original DVD releases of this movie, it's 2003 Direct-to-DVD sequel Charlotte's Web 2: Wilbur's Great Adventure, and the 2006 live action remake, Charlotte's Web. I haven't watched the other two movies yet but I will eventually even though the sequel is Direct-to-DVD, and from what I've seen online, it isn't all that good.

My mom owns a copy of the book, and I've read it once or twice over the years. Also, when I was in kindergarten my class went to see a stage production of the story and it was the first play I ever saw that wasn't a school production that I was in. I think the only reason I even remember the stage production at all is because of how Templeton was portrayed. 

If I had to criticize one thing about this movie is the consistency of Wilbur's wailing whenever he reacts to bad news, or something bad happens. I think it was well written and well acted, but the pitch the actor who played Wilbur, Henry Gibson, used for those scenes, ended up falling into the range that actually bothers me. It's in the same range as Vicky Vale's scream in Batman (1989) and the scream/wailing voice of Serena in the early episodes of the original English dub of Sailor Moon and both of those bother me quite a bit. But otherwise I don't have anything negative to say about this movie. Although, I would like to wonder when Templeton met his wife who we see at the end of the movie. I know, it's a bit of a nitpick, but I do have to mute it or turn the sound down when I'm wearing my headphones because of the pitch used in those scenes. It's a personal thing.

Overall though this movie still holds up after forty-nine years. It also holds up well after having not seen it in thirty years. The story is wonderful, the animation is amazing, the music, particularly the songs by the Sherman Brothers, is fantastic, and I love the characters. Even though the movie has a fairly big cast, it mostly focuses on Wilbur, Charlotte, and Templeton as they're in the most scenes in the movie. If you've never seen it I definitely recommend you check it out. It's not out on Blu-ray, though the 2006 version is, but it is out on DVD, which was re-released back in 2017 so it should be available on that format outside of the 3-movie collection release that I have. 

That's going to be it for me for today. I will be back tomorrow with a comic book review and then on Friday with a review of a TV series pilot episode. I'm considering an idea where I review the pilot episode of a TV show that I have either on iTunes or on DVD or can access on Disney+ and then if I have more than one season in either format then I'll review the series as a whole (if I have the full series) or however many seasons that I have access to. I would love to do more TV content on my blog since TV is one of my favourite forms of entertainment but trying to do week to week episode reviews for all of the shows I'm watching is insane and something I've proven time and time again that I can't maintain for any length of time. So stay tuned. Until then have a wonderful evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.