Gene Siskel named it the best film of 1998. Roger Ebert gave it four stars and said it was better than the original. And it bombed. Babe: Pig in the City opened fifth at the Thanksgiving box office, buried under A Bug’s Life and The Rugrats Movie, and was written off as a misguided sequel to 1995’s Oscar-nominated sleeper hit almost immediately. It took years for audiences to catch up with what director George Miller (Mad Max: Fury Road and The Witches of Eastwick) actually made here, and Kino Lorber’s new 4K UHD is the best argument yet for a full reassessment.

The story picks up right where the original left off. After Babe’s triumph at the sheepherding contest, an accident on the farm leaves Farmer Hoggett (James Cromwell, Big Hero 6) seriously injured. With creditors threatening to repossess everything, Mrs. Hoggett (Magda Szubanski, Memoir of a Snail) takes Babe to the fictional city of Metropolis for a paid appearance to save the farm.

Things go sideways almost immediately. An overzealous airport sniffer dog gets Babe (E.G. Daily, Valley Girl, taking over for Christine Cavanaugh) detained, Mrs. Hoggett is separated from him, and our hero ends up stranded in a chaotic animal refuge run by a kindly clown (Mickey Rooney, Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb), whose small, touching performance becomes the film’s most unexpected surprise.

The refuge is populated by a ragtag crew — displaced orangutans like Thelonius (James Cosmo, The Morrigan), a loyal gang of stray dogs, a family of chimpanzees in matching outfits, a deeply suspicious bull terrier named Flealick (Adam Goldberg, The Exorcism), and a capuchin monkey who might be the wiliest creature in the whole movie. It’s a far cry from Hoggett’s farm, and that’s exactly the point.

Miller, who produced and co-wrote the original but handed directing duties to Chris Noonan, took the reins himself for the sequel and made something far stranger and more ambitious than anyone expected. Pig in the City plays like a Grimm fairy tale filtered through a hallucinatory daydream. The city itself is an impossible collage of world landmarks — the Sydney Opera House, the Hollywood sign, the Eiffel Tower, and the Statue of Liberty all visible from the same vantage point — creating a setting that feels both everywhere and nowhere. The tonal swings are extreme. One scene plays as broad physical comedy; the next deals with genuine peril and loss. It’s the kind of movie that trusts children with more complexity than most adult dramas bother to offer.

So the “dark sequel” reputation isn’t wrong, exactly, but it misses the point. Miller understood that the original Babe already had darkness baked into its premise — the opening minutes show industrial farming and pigs being led to slaughter. Pig in the City simply extends that honesty. The stakes are real, the danger feels genuine, and the emotional payoffs hit harder because of it. Peter Gabriel’s Oscar-nominated “That’ll Do,” written by Randy Newman, packs a major wallop over the closing credits.

Kino Lorber’s 4K disc features a new HDR/Dolby Vision master from a 4K scan of the 35mm original camera negative. Miller’s fantastical city looks spectacular in the expanded color space, with the heightened production design finally getting the visual presentation it was built for. Extras include a new commentary from historian Julie Kirgo and filmmaker Peter Hankoff, a new Miller interview titled “A Darker World,” and the theatrical trailer. 

I’d always dismissed this sequel as lesser-than because I didn’t appreciate the risks Miller was taking when I first saw it. I was wrong then and glad I could revisit it in this splendid new package now. Babe: Pig in the City is a strange delight — ambitious, empathetic, and braver than almost any family film made during that era. We just weren’t quite ready for it. This 4K represents the film beautifully so it can have a new life.