Charlotte's Web

Many of the recent spate of kids' movies - Barnyard, Over The Hedge, Madagascar - have made the mistake of assuming that a feast of CGI will atone for the poverty of the plotline.

This makes no such mistake, taking as its source the touching 1952 children's story by EB White and generously bolstering it with a gallery of fresh peripheral characters and pleasingly contemporary dialogue.

Ten-year-old Dominic Scott Kay voices Wilbur the spring pig who is rescued from the axe by farmer's daughter Fern Arable (Fanning) and found a new home in the Zuckerman barn.

However, his wide-eyed innocence jars with the world weariness of the regular farmyard residents, including John Cleese's acerbic sheep, Robert Redford's brusque nag and Buscemi's selfish glutton of a rat.

Salvation comes in the form of Charlotte, a gently wise spider (voiced in buttery tones by Julia Roberts) who may be the barnyard outcast but provides the warm welcome the confidence-lacking porker needs.

But there's a downside - Wilbur learns that he's unlikely to see the first snows of spring as the fate of the farm's pigs is a berth in the smokehouse and he looks to the webmistress for help.

Director Gary Winick - with the help of some first-class special effects - excises the gloopy memory of 1973's all animation effort to fashion a charming children's tale which isn't afraid to deal with the sadder aspects of growing up.

The voice work is uniformly excellent and there are some beautiful visual setpieces, particularly Charlotte's gorgeously rendered web-spinning sequences.

In the comedy stakes, Thomas Haden Church and OutKast's Andre Benjamin appeal to the nippers as a pair of hapless crows all too easily duped by a scarecrow and running into trouble in a rubbish dump raid.

It's a nicely balanced movie - only the ending lurches towards the lachrymose - with sharp writing (by Erin Brockovich writer Susannah Grant) and nicely delivered lines.

As a kids' movie, it brings home the bacon.

Tim Evans