Can't Un-Hear It: For those who grew up on the 1973 Hanna-Barbera adaptation, just try reading the novel without hearing the voices of Henry Gibson, Debbie Reynolds, and Paul Lynde as Wilbur, Charlotte, and Templeton.
I Am Not Shazam: If you haven't read the book or watched any of its adaptations but have seen the book's cover art online (and didn't notice the word "web"), you'll be forgiven to think that Charlotte is the pig. Nope, the pig's Wilbur, and it's a he. Charlotte is the spider who dies near the end of the story.
It Was His Sled: Even if you haven't read the book or seen either of the film adaptations, you already know that Charlotte dies near the end.
Avery is casually mentioned as having brought a gun to school. Given that the story takes place in a rural farming area in the early twentieth century, bringing a gun to school wasn't as eyebrow-raising to people because school shootings weren't as common.
The way that Fern and Wilbur are separated also counts. Fern begged for Wilbur's life when he was a newborn runt piglet, hand-reared him, and treated him like one of the family. As a result, Wilbur ended up growing into a large pig, catching up with his siblings. Her parents viewed it as Cruel to Be Kind that Fern did such a good job that she's getting too attached to Wilbur and that he has to be sold because he's no longer a baby anymore. While they have a point that pigs don't make good housepets, and that an adult pig is costlier to provide for than a baby pig, it seems a little cold that her father drops the bomb on her and only allows her a day or so to say goodbye before Uncle Zuckerman buys Wilbur. One could hope in the 2020s that either Wilbur could live on her family's farm, or that at least the separation would be her parents breaking it to her gently.
For that matter, there's the source of the plot's central conflict: the fact that Zuckerman plans to kill Wilbur for meat when he's big enough. Even though Fern, Zuckerman's niece, raised Wilbur from birth, still regularly visits him, and loves him as a pet, none of the adults even consider sparing him for her sake; it's treated as a matter of course that a pig's purpose on the farm is to be butchered and eaten.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Near the start of the book, when Wilbur first moves to the Zuckerman farm, a cat is briefly mentioned. Despite the narrative implying that the cat lives in or at least hangs out at the barn with the rest of the animals, the cat is never mentioned again and never gets any lines or appearances. A cat could have served as an interesting character, especially as an enemy of Templeton the rat, who is himself considered something of an enemy to most of the barn animals. The animated film does give the cat a brief scene, but only as a throwaway bit where Charlotte tricks Templeton into going near the cat as punishment for him not caring enough to attend one of her meetings about saving Wilbur.
Values Dissonance: Avery is sent to bed without supper as punishment for attempting to hit Charlotte with a stick. Modern readers might find this too harsh, especially considering most parents wouldn't even care about a spider.
Wangst: Fern is painfully prone to bursting into tears at the smallest provocation, even something as minor as the smell of a rotten goose egg. Wilbur apparently picked up on this trait as she raised him, since he also tends to do it.
The 1973 film
Awesome Music: Arguably the entire soundtrack, but especially "Mother Earth and Father Time". Its hope-filled lyrics about enjoying our short time on Earth is really emotional. This IS the Sherman Brothers we're talking about here.
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: "I Can Talk" in and of itself is not an example (after all, it is what kick-starts the important plot point that Wilbur can, well, talk), but during the song, Wilbur expresses quite a bit of Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness outside of the chorus, like with "perspicacity" and "loquacity." This is pretty ridiculous considering he just learned how to speak, there's little explanation as to how he suddenly learned all these big words, and not only is this not addressed after the song ends, it's thoroughly contradicted later on when he asks the meaning of much simpler words like "salutations." It isn't too surprising coming from the Sherman Brothers, who also wrote "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" and "Fundamental Friend-dependability", that at least one song in the movie would include such, but in context it doesn't come together well. Notably, E.B. White especially disliked the song and asked for it to be removed during production, but without success.
Do Not Do This Cool Thing: Sure, Templeton is a glutton for gorging himself on discarded fairground scraps, some of which is already in the garbage by the time he gets to it, but when all the food he's actually shown eating is drawn so appetizingly, who can blame him?
Nausea Fuel: Well-drawn food or not, there's no getting around the fact that Templeton's "smorgasbord" consists entirely of literal garbage either eaten off the ground or dug out of trash cans (he is still a rat, after all). His verse in "A Veritable Smorgasbord" aren't much better, describing such delectable treats as soggy sandwiches, apple cores and melon rinds.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Jeffrey the Gander tries to go with Wilbur to the fair as emotional support. The grownups, however, gently escort him out of the crate, saying that he'll get crushed if he spends the whole journey with a pig and Jeffrey needs to be with his mother. Afterwards, he never appears again, even after Wilbur comes home from the fair. Having Jeffrey at the fair would have helped with Wilbur's loneliness after Fern goes to ride the Ferris Wheel with Henry Fussy, and if he had still been with Wilbur after the fair, he would have helped to fill the void left by Charlotte's death.
Charlotte weaving the first web to save Wilbur's life, after singing him to sleep with a lullaby. The animation is downright gorgeous.
Charlotte's Dark Reprise of "Mother Earth, Father Time" to reassure Wilbur as she starts dying in front of him. Making it worse, it takes a few seconds of him calling for her for it to sink in that she's gone.
Squick: An accidental example. During Templeton's smorgasbord, he dives into a pitcher of discarded lemonade that's painted in a shade of yellow that looks a little too much like pee.
Unintentional Uncanny Valley: The more realistically drawn human characters don't bode quite so well with the more exaggerated cartoony designs of the animals.
Vindicated by History: Didn't do so well in the box office - however on VHS, it managed to become a bestseller. (One of the few non-Disney animated movies to do this.)
Wangst: Wilbur is over-the-top even when he has real reason to be upset. In the book it feels less melodramatic because he's clearly a young child in pig years, but with the grown man's voice of Henry Gibson his wailing and sobbing sounds a bit more ridiculous. It's pretty telling that Charlotte's introduction has her sharply ordering him to knock off the whining and buck up.
The 2003 DTV sequel
Awesome Animation: The movie has some pretty decent animation and backgrounds, given both its low budget and how lackluster everything else about it is.
Awesome Music: Some of the vocal songs aren't half-bad, with praise in particular going to "It's Not So Hard To Be A Pig".
Ensemble Dark Horse: If you can believe it, the most well-received parts of the sequel were those that had the strongest connection to the original film — Charlotte's three daughters, Nellie, Aranea, and Joy, who get a subplot about trying to live up to their mother.
Narm: A lot of it, but the insults the other lambs hurl at Cardigan are kinda silly.
"He's a loser, with a capital L!"
"He's got two left feet!"
"He sure don't have the smarts to be a sheep!"
Moe: Despite the mixed reception, Cardigan has gained a following due to his cute appearance and personality. Knowing he was voiced by Harrison Chad (original voice of Boots the Monkey) certainly helps.
Sequelitis: It's an unnecessary, blandly Lighter and Softer direct-to-video sequel that does almost nothing to follow up on the plot of the original. You expected anything different? (Especially with the jarring difference in character designs.) It didn't help that literally nobody involved with the original worked on it, not even the actors, although this is probably justified given the three-decade gap between films.
The Woobie: Poor Cardigan suffers a fair amount. First, he's openly bullied and ridiculed by the other lambs of his birth flock for being the only black-wooled sheep on the farm. Then, after it seems like he's finally got a true blue friend in the form of Wilbur, he's bought by another farmer at the fair and promptly relocated, where it seems he's also treated with contempt by the other animals. After all this, Farley kidnaps him and nearly eats him.
Wilbur doesn't have it any easier in this movie - it's shown that he is still somewhat grieving over Charlotte, is teased by the other animals for his cowardly tendencies, and then endures his second heartache at the fair when Cardigan is sold off to a neighboring farm.
The spider sisters have a lot on their shoulders as they hope to live up to their mother's legacy, but they constantly doubt they'll ever be as noble and compassionate as Charlotte was.
Any song on the film’s soundtrack is beautifully performed by a Christian or country singer. They all fit the themes and the tone of the movie perfectly well.
Creepy Cute: Charlotte, needless to say. It's even lampshaded at the end when Charlotte's children are born.
While the film tries to make Charlotte as expressive and even beautiful as a realistic spider can get, she's still bound to spook a few arachnophobes, especially in close up shots.
Her three remaining children aren't quite so lucky, as their designs are a lot more hyper-realistic, lacking the expressiveness of their mother and otherwise just looking like normal baby spiders. And the cut to them is so sudden that it can feel like a Jump Scare.
Tainted by the Preview: The infamous farting cow scene caused a huge backlash when the trailer was first released.
Ugly Cute: Charlotte. Aside from having only two eyes and several "eyespots," she otherwise looks like a real spider and, as mentioned above, you'll probably have a hard time watching this movie if you're arachnophobic. Still, she's otherwise so elegant and expressive (especially with Julia Roberts' comforting voice) that she comes off as beautiful.
Visual Effects of Awesome: Any scene that features Charlotte spinning a web. The CGI mouth movements of the barn animals also look impressively good and well-timed to the voice performances, which was quite a feat for live-action talking animal films at the time.
. Its hope-filled lyrics about enjoying our short time on Earth is really emotional. This IS the Sherman Brothers we're talking about here.