rewatching charlotte's web 40+ years later

The Charlotte's Web I'm referring to is the animated movie from 1973. And even before I start, I noticed something weird right at the beginning of the flick. The copyright date states 1972, but it's always listed everywhere as '73, so I looked up why that is. It's because the release date was 1973-March-1.

Only because I didn't know otherwise, I always thought this was a Disney movie. No. It's Hanna-Barbera. I could forgive anybody for mistaking this as from Disney, as it an animated feature film, a musical, G-rated, has talking animals in it, dancing numbers, and so on.

As for how I feel about the movie, I'll get the negatives out of the way first.

I know this movie is made for kids, but even so, it plays it way too safe. Tension is what makes for a good story. The simplest way to explain that tension is seeing something happen in the movie and feeling anticipation for what's coming next. Something happens, curiosity is sparked, and an emotional connection is made because you wonder what's coming. At this point it's up to the movie to determine how much anticipation to build before delivering the result. Good timing is necessary, and the result has to be satisfying.

For example, in Fantasia during The Sorcerer's Apprentice part of the movie, all of that is a masterful example of what proper tension is, even though not a word of dialogue is spoken. Right from the start, you see examples of tension, first with Mickey looking to the sorcerer standing in the darkness with a glow below him, where he's conjuring a mysterious mist. That's where the curiosity happens. Mickey wants to know what that is, but more importantly, you want to know what that is. Something bad? Something good? You don't know, and want to find out. The question is answered. The mist turns into a beautiful butterfly. The timing is just right, executed perfectly. And so much is said in just those few moments. The sorcerer is powerful, mysterious, mystical, and benevolent as he brought beauty out of the darkness.

Charlotte's Web, unfortunately, squanders tension at every given opportunity by deflating it much too fast. As I was re-watching it all these years later, from scene to scene I could tell there was an ever-present "don't scare the kids; don't make them cry" thing going on.

A simple example of that is the part when Wilbur thinks he can spin a web like a spider. He gets a string tied to his tail, Templeton loops the other side of the string on a nail sticking out of a rafter in the barn, Wilbur gets on a hay bail, tells everybody to watch him, leaps, he hangs in the air by the string, the string lets go, he falls on his ass, everybody laughs at him. And right after that when he says, "I'm gonna try that again!", Charlotte immediately replies back with, "I advise you to put the idea out of your mind", and that's it, move on.

The problem here is what happens after he falls. Or rather, what didn't happen.

Wilbur did not get hurt after he fell. Opportunity for tension lost. Nobody rushed to him to ask if he was okay. Another opportunity lost. He wanted to try a second time but didn't. Yet another opportunity lost.

The entire movie is like this. Every single time any buildup for tension happens with anything, nope, stop, don't scare the kids, don't make them cry, make everything happy-go-lucky again, move on.

This is, incidentally, why some people think this movie is boring and uninteresting. With every opportunity for story tension cut off quickly, the overall presentation suffers as a result.

What Charlotte's Web gets right is the showing the bigness of the country. Several scenes are far-back that show rolling hillsides, scenic views, long winding roads, and farmhouses. The paintings showing these things were made with care, and it shows.

The "Charlotte's Web" song scene, which comes right after "Deep in the Dark" song, is this movie's Fantasia tribute, which is why I mentioned that flick above. Not a bad thing, as it looks fantastic and was tastefully done.

It's the second half of the movie where the real money was spent, particularly in scenes when Charlotte is shown very up close. And this is where I can talk about seeing this now more than 40 years later.

As a kid, I only ever saw this movie on television and never in the theater, so my view of it was on a CRT television that both fuzzed out details and blocked seeing the full frame because of the 4:3 aspect ratio.

Before re-watching this, I never knew Charlotte had eyelashes, nor did I know she was animated with teeth that you can see very briefly in up-close shots when she spoke. I also didn't know she had antennae either. All of that stuff was fuzzed out from watching this on a tube television. Bear in mind what was shown on TV then was well before the days of remastered movies with cleaned up film. All the film jitter, washy colors and bad audio is what made it to broadcast.

I'm also certain seeing the movie originally as cropped 4:3 on CRT wrecked how certain scenes were supposed to look more than a little bit.

Still good?

Yes, still good.

Great?

No, but above-average.

I am glad I got to see all the visual details I never knew were there. As for story, the constant tension deflating knocks it down a few pegs.

I've never seen any of the other movies and don't intend to. I am aware of Charlotte's Web 2: Wilbur's Great Adventure from 2003 and 2006 live-action remake.

The '73 version is what I wanted to see again. I was glad to re-watch it.

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Published 2025 Dec 16