1995 – Babe (WINNER)
The fact that this stupid children’s movie was nominated for best picture is baffling to me. The fact that it took home the Oscar for Best Visual Effects is a tragedy, especially since it beat out the incredible effects of Apollo 13. I know that it may seem like my distain for the ridiculous nature of the plot is coloring my judgement of the movie’s effects, and I am certainly guilty of that in a small way, but I also have very definite reasons why the effects for Babe didn’t really deserve the award.
First, this movie’s effects were a one trick pony. The big and magical effect that wowed the Academy voters was just the same effect used over and over again. We got to see animals talk. There was the pig, of course, but also dogs, sheep, a cow, a duck, a rooster, a horse, a cat, and three little mice. Aside from the effect of making the animals talk in English, the movie had almost no effects at all.
And maybe that would have been ok, except that it wasn’t always done well. The way the animation was done was to digitally map out the faces of the animals, then add CGI bottom jaws and lips. Sometimes this was done to live animals, and sometimes it was done to animatronic puppets that couldn’t mimic human speech patterns by shaping vowels and consonants. In some cases, the bottom jaws of the animals had to be flexible enough to bend in order to form the words. In an effect where they were trying to make the movement look real and natural, it just didn’t work. I’m not saying it never worked, but it was very inconsistent.
Sometimes, when an animal was speaking, the CGI mouths opened wide enough so that the background could be seen between its teeth. But because the real animal, whose mouth was still closed, was between the camera and the background, there was a hole in the background where the closed mouth was removed. When that happened, the animators had to fill in the empty space with CGI to match the hole in the image.
And then there was the animatronic animals themselves. As long as the puppets were completely motionless, they looked just fine. But when they moved, they gave themselves away. It was often far too obvious when a shot changed from using a live animal to a fake one. It was terrible! The three little mice that announced each scene in the movie by reading the title cards for the movie’s target audience, who were too young to read, were awful. They were animatronic animals that didn’t move at all like real mice. The desired illusion never worked. Not once.
And that was it. Aside from a shot where Babe sheds a few tears, and the climax of the movie where six sheep walk in perfect formation, there just weren’t many effects to speak of. The problem is that the movie was geared toward audiences between two and ten years old. They would be the only ones who would either not notice the really fake looking animals, or would not care. And I’m sorry, but I have to say it for the hundredth time, because in this case, it really does tie into the film’s special effects. Cute for the sake of cute is never cute. Never!