My beefs with Walden Media’s significantly revised version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe are well-documented here.
And on Friday, I mentioned my misgivings about the direction in which Walden Media seems to be taking Bridge to Terabithia.
Now, Jeff Overstreet is sounding the alarm about Walden Media‘s live-action version of Charlotte’s Web, starring Dakota Fanning as Fern and Julia Roberts as Charlotte, the spider. To quote him:
The trailer prominently displays a moment when a rat is running along a rail and is knocked off by the force of a noisy cow fart.
Yep.
They’ve brought Charlotte’s Web that low.
Sure, it’s only one moment from the preview. But it’s a moment they’re flaunting, and that does not bode well for the film.
To which I can only say, No kidding. Walden Media is supposed to be making relatively faithful adaptations of children’s-literature classics, films that educators will want to share with their students — but do these sorts of tweaks help to achieve that goal? Or, dare I ask, has education deteriorated that badly in recent years?
BTW, I haven’t seen the cartoon version of Charlotte’s Web (1973; my comments) in some time, but I have been thinking about it in recent days, since my wife and I have been playing my Mary Poppins (1964) CD and DVD a fair bit lately, and the music for both films was written by Richard M. Sherman & Robert B. Sherman.
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