There is something about Dakota Fanning which makes Charlotte's Web - the film adaptation of the popular book by E.B. White - a rather strange children's movie, despite its flawless interpretation of White's imaginative details.
Dakota makes a great heroine - the kind of girl who will fight against all odds and scream at the top of her lungs to have things her way.
In Charlotte's Web, her mission as Fern Arable, a farmer's daughter, is to save her piglet friend Wilbur from becoming someone's dinner.
She goes about her business with the same level of guts and determination she displayed as the terror-stricken but clever girl escaping from murderous aliens in Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds.
The opening scene, where Fern rushes into the barn to stop her father killing the newborn Wilbur, is somewhat creepy given the fiery passion that Dakota brings to her character. It looks as if she is challenging her father to a duel rather than begging for the life of a cute animal. You almost expect the pair to draw swords.
But the farmer allows Fern to keep Wilbur as her pet. But as the pig grows bigger, it is sent to a farm to be fattened up for the butcher shop.
Fortunately, Julia Roberts, as the voice of the computer-animated pregnant spider Charlotte, comes to the rescue.