Sometimes I Think About How Babe (1995) Was Nominated For Best Picture

A few years ago, after The Shape of Water won Best Picture at the Oscars (and Birdman a few years before that), there was an ongoing film hobbyist conversation that piqued my interest: Should either of these films be considered the weirdest Best Picture winner ever?

I’m not here to answer that question, though. Or talk about either of those films at all. I’m here to talk about a film that could’ve possibly joined that conversation had it not been for a certain problematic Australian.

That’s right. Babe. Yes, the one about the pig who talks.

Did you know that Babe was nominated for Best Picture? I bet you didn’t. Unless you and I talk on a regular basis, because this is something I bring up often in conversation. But it was. It sure as hell was. And we don’t talk enough about just how weird that is.

The most obvious reason is a pretty big one: Movies for children don’t get nominated for the top prize very often. Or at least they didn’t back then. Sure, Beauty and the Beast received such an honor just a few years before Babe did, but before that you’d have to go all the way back to E.T. to find another family-friendly nominee. And you’d have to skip ahead to 2009 (Up) to find the next such film, and that’s probably due in large part to the increased number of Best Picture nominees that was implemented that year.

Since then, there have been a few others. Like Toy Story 3 and Hugo and...well, that’s pretty much it. (Maybe you could count Black Panther too.) Not only does that show how few children’s films are nominated, it also highlights another one of Babe’s outlier qualities: It’s not made by a huge studio or a prominent director.

I bet you know who directed E.T. and Hugo. And I bet you know which studio produced Beauty and the Beast and Up and Toy Story 3. Do you know who distributed Babe? Maybe you do. (It’s Universal Pictures.) But do you know who produced Babe? You probably don’t. Hell, I had to look it up. (It’s an Australian company called Kennedy Miller Productions, which is co-owned by George Miller. We’ll get to him in the next paragraph.)

Here’s an even harder pop quiz, since we’re doing that: Do you know who directed Babe? I had to look this up too. It was a guy named Chris Noonan. Not George Miller, as you might think; he produced and co-wrote it with Chris, and allegedly Miller’s “vision” was “handed to Chris on a plate.” (His words, for the record.) And then Miller went on to direct the sequel too.

But this is Noonan’s film. At least it is on paper, even if George might disagree. And then Noonan kinda just...disappeared. He didn’t direct another film until Miss Potter in 2006, and that’s the only other theatrical narrative film he’s ever made. A rather dubious trajectory* for a man who was a Best Director nominee!

That’s a lot of weirdness right there. But folks, we haven’t even talked about the film itself.

This is a movie about talking farm animals! Not animated animals, which feels less weird when they talk. And not an alien like E.T. who learns English from his Earth friends. This movie is full of dogs and cats and sheep and ducks and cows who talk. None of this is all that weird for a kid’s movie, but are there other Best Picture nominees about talking pigs? I would have to check just to be sure**, but I am willing to bet that there are not.

You know what’s even weirder about that, though? The talking animals aren’t even presented consistently! What I mean to say is, sometimes Babe and his friends are shown as animatronic puppets, and sometimes they are real animals whose faces have been digitally altered to make their mouths move with the dialogue. And actually, neither presentation looks all that bad (this film’s only Oscar win was for Visual Effects, after all), but it is quite jarring to go from one method to the other.

But do you want to know the weirdest thing of all about Babe’s rise to Oscar prominence? If you ask me, it’s the fact that Babe...kinda deserved it. (Which, as we know, is often not the case with the Oscars.)

Yes, 1995 was full of great films like Heat, Casino, Clueless, Before Sunrise, and Seven that didn’t receive Best Picture nominations. But Babe is also kinda great. It’s a very warm and fuzzy film about the virtues of asking nicely, complete with an absolutely delightful climax, and I think that’s just really nice. (It also features at least two instances of bloodshed and constant reminders that animals are butchered for food, which is, again, weird, considering that it’s rated G. But we don’t have time to go down that path.)

I don’t subscribe to the Oscars as cinema gospel, and neither should you. But I find them fascinating as a cultural study. And while I don’t remember much about 1995, it makes me happy that a thoroughly weird movie about a brave little talking piglet captured our collective hearts.

*It is very possible that things in Chris Noonan’s personal life kept him from having a more illustrious career. But as I’ve said before, I will not be conducting “research” for this newsletter.

**Again, “research” is not what we do here.

Babe is now streaming on HBO Max and DirecTV, and it’s available to rent elsewhere.