‘Charlotte’s Web’ captures essence of E.B. White’s tale

In theaters

CHARLOTTE’S WEB, directed by Gary Winick, written by Susannah Grant and Karey Kirkpatrick, 98 minutes, rated G.

Gary Winick’s “Charlotte’s Web,” from a screenplay Susannah Grant and Karey Kirkpatrick based on E.B. White’s novel, doesn’t come close to achieving the magic of the book, but that likely will surprise only those who haven’t read the book.

For those who have and who have great affection for it, the good news is that this telling of the tale does an earnest job in capturing the book’s essence in spite of being bound to the limitations of a literal medium – film.

With a book this fragile – it does, after all, feature a clutch of wise-cracking animals facing the deadly fate of a spring pig named Wilbur – the shift from one’s personal interpretations of the book to a live cast’s interpretation could have gone either way. For the most part, it goes the right way.

Set in Hancock, Maine (in Somerset County, no less, a rather glaring error), the film stars Dakota Fanning as Fern, a farm girl who witnesses the birth of 11 pigs, with one, the runt of the litter, about to be axed by her father (Kevin Anderson) when Fern intervenes.

She won’t hear of the pig’s death and soon, with her mother (Essie Davis) and father’s reluctant consent, Fern is raising Wilbur herself until he’s old enough to go across the way to her uncle’s barn. There, Fern still will have a hand in Wilbur’s care, but the film’s underlying tension comes from her uncle’s real intention for allowing the pig into the fold. Once Wilbur has enough meat on him, this spring pig won’t live to see the first snows of winter.

He’ll be smoked.

Part of what made the book so great is that none of this is shielded from him. White dealt directly and honestly with life and death on the farm, refusing to sugarcoat its downside because he respected the animals first, his audience second. Same goes for the movie, which stays true to the book in that Wilbur (voiced by Dominic Scott Kay), who is so full of life and who just wants a friend, must face his own death just as life for him is beginning.

That’s a heavy truth for a pig to face, never mind the tots in the audience who likely now will be thinking long and hard about what’s on their dinner plates.

Lifting the mood considerably are those plucky, funny barn animals Wilbur wins over – a solid, all-star cast voices them – with the film’s other key relationship obviously being the one that builds between Wilbur and Charlotte (Julia Roberts), the gentle spider with the wise eyes who not only can weave a web, but also her share of words within that web.

The bond that grows between them is the movie at its most touching, with their deep friendship – and the promises made in that friendship – helping the film to mount its emotionally charged ending.

The book, which White published in 1952 after observing life in his own barn in North Brooklin, Maine, was inspired by a pig the author himself owned and by a gray spider he occasionally would note weaving her web, catching her prey, and then, in the twilight of summer, whom he saw making the nest that would protect her unborn young after her death.

Their effect on him helped to turn his book into a classic, and while the movie likely won’t enjoy the same outcome, it nevertheless deserves to be seen.

Grade: B+

On DVD

LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, written by Michael Arndt, 101 minutes, rated R.

“Little Miss Sunshine” is all about failure – personal failure, public failure, professional failure, romantic failure, car failure, eye failure, even heart failure. And yet the film, from newcomers Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, is a winner.

This trippy, caustically funny road movie is one of the brightest (and darkest) comedies to hit theaters in a while. It follows the beleaguered Hoover family, a seemingly hopeless wreck of geeks and losers who reluctantly get behind their one shred of hope – endearing, 7-year-old Olive (Abigail Breslin) – when good news strikes. By default, this goofy, bespectacled girl has been chosen to participate in the Little Miss Sunshine pageant in Redondo Beach, Calif.

Since the Hoovers live in Albuquerque and have zip for money, that means a road trip is at hand, with everybody in the family climbing aboard the Hoovers’ dilapidated Volkswagen bus, itself a rather sizeable metaphor for their broken relationships, and setting off for parts unknown – literally and figuratively.

At the wheel is patriarch Richard (Greg Kinnear), a third-rate motivational speaker who has yet to see the benefits of his own work. There’s Richard’s harried wife, Sheryl (Toni Collette), whose brother, Frank (Steve Carell), recently tried to commit suicide.

A renowned Proust scholar, Frank slashed his wrists when he learned that his boyfriend had dumped him for another, much older Proust scholar. Since the hospital won’t release him without supervision, Frank agrees to live with the Hoovers, the remaining two of whom include teenage son Dwayne (Paul Dano), who hates his family and has taken a Nietzschean vow of silence, and Grandpa (Alan Arkin), who got kicked out of his retirement facility because he was hooked on heroin.

Dysfunction is a river that runs through “Little Miss Sunshine,” but so do the characters’ unexpected moments of humanity, caring and understanding, which keep the film from being the black comedy it otherwise might have been.

The actors also serve that end, with Carell, Dano and the marvelous Breslin striking a comparatively calming balance against the manic heat provided by Collette, Kinnear and Arkin.

Grade: B+