It's fairly refreshing to have a faithful adaptation of a beloved children's tale brought to the screen. Gary Winick's version of Charlotte's Web captures the moral spirit of E.B. White's hugely popular barnyard fable. The film pretty much gets it right, putting the lessons learned in the forefront, and does a noteworthy job of bringing the cast of farm animals to life. Mixing real animals, animatronics, and computer animation, most of the talking critter effects work, although there are a few notable exceptions. The movie spends a bit too much time on cheesy jokes and puns and the occasional harmless scatological gag, and it might seem a bit pandering to teach children lessons with really cute, anthropomorphized animals. That comes with the territory, though, and the latter is the entire point of White's story to begin with. These are small concessions for a film that actually teaches kids principles and has a values system. While the film might sound preachy from all of that, Charlotte's Web is fun, bright, cheery, and doesn't lecture; it lets the story do the talking.

Young Fern (Dakota Fanning) lives on a farm with her family. One night, she goes out to the barn to find her father (Kevin Anderson) looking upon the new piglets. One of them is a runt, and before he can kill it, Fern stops him. She promises to take care of it and names it Wilbur. For a while, Fern and Wilbur are inseparable. She feeds it, takes it to school, keeps it in a baby carriage, and sings it to sleep at night. Her mother (Essie Davis) is concerned about the eventual fact of a 300-pound swine in the house, and her dad convinces Fern to give Wilbur to her uncle Homer's (Gary Basaraba) farm across the street. After Wilbur (voice of Dominic Scott Kay) is sent to his new home, he meets an assortment of new friends. Fern still visits, and a smokehouse sits ominously yards away. One night, he hears a voice from above trying to comfort him, and the next morning he discovers it was of a spider named Charlotte (voice of Julia Roberts) who becomes his first official friend. All is well until Wilbur learns the frightful truth from Templeton the rat (voice of Steve Buscemi, a great piece of casting) that all spring pigs end up on the Christmas dinner table.

From here we have the story pretty much everyone knows. To save her friend from slaughter, Charlotte begins spinning words in her web, and people come from miles around to see "some pig" that's both "terrific" and "humble." In the meantime, there are some fart jokes that are completely out of place, and occasionally one of the farm animals will throw out some cheap one-liners. Templeton enjoys having a rotten egg to place in his den ("eggs-actly"), and when it breaks, "Guess the yolks on me." Har har.