In a movie featuring the world’s most famous spider and pig duo, it is what’s good about the geese who are really worth a gander.
That’s because in the new live-action, talking-critter version of E.B. White’s beloved 1952 children’s classic “Charlotte’s Web,” zillionaire icon Oprah Winfrey and the hilarious Cedric the Entertainer voice the married goose couple Gussy and Golly.
“If Oprah is my wife, the first thing I’m gonna do is ask for the checkbook,” Cedric jokes during interviews promoting the picture last week at a Manhattan hotel. “She definitely wore the pants. But I don”t mind being the K-Fed of acting!” he quips, referring to singer Britney Spears’ soon-to-be ex mooch.
Winfrey and Cedric top off an all-star cast that also includes Julia Roberts voicing the immortal title arachnid, Robert Redford as the skittish horse Ike, John Cleese as a bossy sheep, Kathy Bates and Reba McEntire as flatulent cows, OutKast’s Andre Benjamin as a new crow character named Elwyn and Steve Buscemi as the book’s notorious scavenger, Templeton.
Twelve-year-old acting veteran Dakota Fanning is the legendary human optimist, Fern, the golden-haired Maine girl who rescues the piglet runt Wilbur from the smokehouse and sets the animal tale in motion. Because the baby swine grew out of their part at the rate of a pound per day during the 3 1/2-month shoot in Victoria, Australia, Fanning ended up working with some 50 different ones.”The pigs were so cute,” she remembers. “They’re like dogs: smart and adorable. And they don’t even smell!”
And neither do boys, apparently? Fanning gets her first movie love interest in “Charlotte’s Web.” Hand-holding and flirty looks ensue, at least on screen. “I’m not into boys yet in real life,” the slim preteen grins, flashing her braces and blushing noticeably.
For great pop-eyed actor Buscemi, even though he’s known for his weasely roles in projects like “Con Air” and HBO’s “The Sopranos,” playing the sly rodent had its challenges too. “He’s not just a rat. He’s the rat. He’s Templeton! My big reservation was that I had Paul Lynde’s voice stuck in my head.”
The distinctive late comedian Lynde had previously defined Templeton for fans from the 1973 cartoon musical “Web” adaptation.
But Buscemi agreed to follow in those claw prints because he, like millions of young readers and their parents, felt so deeply about the story’s themes of friendship and loss.
“Yes, it’s a little scary and sad,” he says. “But ‘Charlotte’s Web’ has good life lessons. Your loved ones won’t always be around. You live and die and the important thing is to have good friends and family. And they can live on — or at least a spider can live on — in your heart.”
