Charlotte’s Web/Lassie/Paulie Peter Dinklage 2008 DVD Top-quality

Three popular children’s movies featuring animals in a starring role. ‘Charlotte’s Web’ (2006) is a re-telling of the famed E.B. White classic about a friendship between a pig, a spider and a little girl. After the farm’s prize sow gives birth to a grand litter, little Fern the farmer’s daughter (Dakota Fanning) falls in love with the runt whom she names Wilbur (Dominic Scott Kay). After Fern’s pleading with her father for Wilbur’s life, the fretful little porker is no less haunted by visions of his demise/apple sauce-pairing and cries rather a lot. Charlotte (voice of Julia Roberts), a friendly spider soothes him and becomes his firm friend. Together, they hatch a plan whereby Charlotte will spin words into her web and create a sensation so as the heat is drawn from the imminent pork rib BBQ. ‘Lassie’ (2005) is based on Eric Knight’s 1938 novel. The film is set on the eve of World War II in a Yorkshire mining town in northern England. The Carraclough family fall on hard times and have to sell Lassie to the Duke of Rudling (Peter O’Toole). Transported to the Duke’s remote castle in the north of Scotland, Lassie is determined to escape from the clutches of the Duke and his evil trainer, in an effort to make her way home for Christmas and return to the family she loves. Finally, in ‘Paulie’ (1998), jabber-beaked parrot, Paulie (voice of Jay Mohr), is in the habit of talking himself into trouble. Nevertheless, the streetwise bird is determined to fly its way to the girl who raised him, even if it means enlisting the help of those pesky humans en route.