ON A STORYBOOK farm, a runty pig survives a litter thanks to the intercession of young Fern (Dakota Fanning), who loves and cares for the piglet she names Wilbur. When fall comes and she heads back to school, Fern's uncle takes in the pig with the eventual hopes of curing Wilbur in his smokehouse. Happily, Wilbur makes a friend, the educated spider Charlotte (Julia Roberts does the voice). She will save Wilbur's life, using her talent as a writer. By now, E.B. White's children's story is good to go for a Simpsons parody. Still, at the preview, it was satisfying to see the ending striking an audience of unsuspecting children, accustomed as they are to stories with resurrection at the end of them. In this minor animated version, the finale of Charlotte's Web has its old convulsive effect, just as it did when Mrs. Cheek read it aloud at San Pascual Elementary School some years back.

This computer-animated film is fissured with flaws. Yes, the first appearance of Fanning has something like the wistfulness of Garth Williams' illustrations. Too bad about the cheap-looking color processes that try to tint the Australian locations to look like Maine. And it's a pity about the film's serious lack of feel for rural life—having the hay come in before the Fourth of July must have been the result of filming in the Southern Hemisphere.

The focus on the celebrity voices doing the animal characters means that the human characters are neglected. We do get a heavyweight roster of critters: John Cleese voicing an officious bellwether, Oprah Winfrey and Cedric the Entertainer doing a pair of geese, Andre 3000 and Thomas Haden Church as desperate crows, and Robert Redford as a skittish talking horse. The only one without a tail who gets to act much is Beau Bridges, playing a patronizing shrink who tells Fern's mother that Fern's fascination with Wilbur is just a syndrome of childhood. Thus Bridges irritates pig lovers and children alike.

The film has a 7th Heaven-ly side; did Charlotte mention saying grace in the original book? Tedious additions burden the film. Thanks, director Gary Winick, for the numerous cow-fart jokes. The kids, you know, they really wouldn't have known the story was funny without them. The computer animation works well enough; not only can Wilbur talk, he can make a sickly smile. The point is that there was far more charm in Babe, which did everything this film does with more class.

I was most interested in the materialist Templeton the Rat, voiced by Steve Buscemi. White, co-author of a famous text on writing, might be using this allegory of a pig and a spider to suggest how writers save their own bacon. Charlotte is said to be both a good friend and good writer. But where would she be without her rodent muse? Templeton may never have heard of Dr. Johnson, but he would certainly agree with the sage that no man (or rat) but a blockhead wrote except for money. No writer can survive without having a lot of Templeton in him; he must have a determination to scour the world's junkyards in search of the right word. At heart he must be a snarling pragmatist, and he must have a true love of a full slop trough.

Charlotte's Web (G; 97 min.), directed by Gary Winick, written by Susannah Grant, Karey Kirkpatrick and Earl Hamner Jr., based on the book by E.B. White, photographed by Seamus McGarvey and starring Dakota Fanning, opens Dec. 15.

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