The new film version of Charlotte’s Web stands in the shadow of two earlier masterpieces.

One, of course, is E.B. White’s classic 1951 children’s novel, the best-beloved of White’s children’s books.

The other is the 1995 film Babe, which pioneered live-action talking animal movies and remains the standard by which they are judged.

White’s Charlotte’s Web is joyously alive and his porcine protagonist, Wilbur, is sympathetic and ingenuous. As a main character, though, Wilbur is passive and somewhat weak. His story is all about what others can do for him, never what he can do, either for himself or anyone else. Next to the plucky hero of Babe, Wilbur seems passive and diffident — hardly the special creature that the spider Charlotte makes him out to be in the words she spins into her web.

To their credit, the makers of Charlotte’s Web have made some effort to rectify this. Borrowing a page from Babe, they’ve subtly recast Wilbur as a blithe spirit whose positive outlook and accepting attitude come as a breath of fresh air in the Zuckermans’ barn. In this retelling, Charlotte the spider is regarded with distaste by the other barnyard animals; her friendship with Wilbur is as much his gift to her as hers to him.

Competently directed by Gary Winick (13 Going on 30), the film basically sticks to the plot of the book, and the story’s essential charm is echoed in the film.  At the same time, the film also dumbs down White with excursions into gimmicky broad humor and bestiary slapstick — something the makers of Babe found unnecessary.

Most of White’s supporting characters, particularly the animals, have been coarsened into comic mugging caricatures. The goose and gander — much like Mr. and Mrs. Beaver in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe — have been transformed into a comic bickering couple (Cedric the Entertainer and Oprah Winfrey). The crusty old sheep has morphed into a peevish snob (John Cleese) perpetually exasperated with the wooly-mindedness of his fellows. There’s also a pathologically arachnophobic horse (one-time horse whisperer Robert Redford), some flatulent cows (Kathy Bates and Reba McEntire) and a pair of roguish but bird-brained crows (Thomas Haden Church and André Benjamin).

A few of these schticks are funny, especially the crows, and also Cleese’s sheep (“Just because we’re sheep doesn’t mean we have to follow!”). Others fall flat. All of it, though, burns screen time that could have been better used to put more of what White actually wrote on the screen.

Take the indelible scene in which Wilbur brashly announces his intention to try to spin a web, induces Templeton the rat to tie a bit of string to his tail, and flings himself twice off from the highest spot of the manure pile — crashing both times to the ground. Recall Charlotte’s sensible observation: “You lack two things needed for spinning a web. You lack spinnerettes and you lack know-how.”

This classic learning-arc episode from the book is alluded to in the film, but it’s reduced to a throwaway bit during a montage highlighting Wilbur’s exuberant sense of fun rather than his inexperience.

The film dumbs down the grown-up humans, too, making them duller and more docile than their literary counterparts. No longer does Fern (Dakota Fanning, perhaps a bit precious for the tomboyish Fern) have to plead with her father for Wilbur’s life, as she does in the book, or convince him to give her the pig. Instead, she simply takes the piglet from her father’s arms, declaring firmly, “I absolutely will not let you kill him.”

Nor are the Zuckermans any longer sensible enough to wonder whether the message in the web has more to say about the spider rather than the pig; instead, they immediately and unquestioningly accept the message in the web as “a miracle.” In one of the film’s most inexplicable lines, when they go to call on their pastor, he asks, “What brings you here? Divinity?” (Huh?)

The filmmakers smooth out and gloss some of the book’s rougher edges — in the process subtly sapping something of the book’s joys. Wilbur’s desperate loneliness and boredom on a rainy day in the barn prior to meeting Charlotte have been softened. Instead of sobbing disconsolately on the manure pile, he gaily capers about his enclosure trying to make friends. Yet the lack of desperation makes Charlotte’s appearance less momentous. Wilbur’s need is less gnawing, so Charlotte’s friendship is less pivotal.

White was a renowned expert on style; The Elements of Style, coauthored with William Strunk Jr., is an indispensable guide for writers. Screenwriters Susannah Grant (Erin Brockovich) and Karey Kirkpatrick (Over the Hedge) utilize White’s writing about half as often as they should.

The dialogue is often White’s, though mixed with comic mugging from the supporting cast. Yet for some reason the script utilizes almost wholly original voiceover narration, jettisoning virtually all of White’s graceful prose in favor of the screenwriters’ own musings, which are no match for White.

Gone are such sentences as “When your stomach is empty and your mind is full, it’s always hard to sleep” and “Nobody, of the hundreds of people who had visited the fair, knew that a grey spider had played the most important role of all.” Gone is White’s vividly olfactory description of the barn, replaced instead by pseudo-profundities such as “The barn was full of living things, but that didn’t mean it was full of life.”

Only in the film’s closing moments does the script belatedly hark to White for the final lines about the rarity of meeting someone who is both a good friend and a good writer.

Among the talented cast, which includes a rather bland Julia Roberts as Charlotte and 10-year-old Dominic Scott Kay (who’s a girl) as Wilbur, the standout is unquestionably Steve Buscemi as Templeton the rat. Ideally cast in the role voiced to perfection in the 1973 cartoon by Paul Lynde, Buscemi more than makes the part his own. He’s the best thing about the film. (One oddity about Kay’s performance as Wilbur: Though we watch Wilbur grow into young adulthood, his voice stays high and squeaky.)

Charlotte’s Web is fair family entertainment, though the story would have been better served by a more faithful adaptation — and more inspired direction. The basic appeal of White’s story is sturdy enough to survive the filmmakers’ more dubious choices and the emotional climax may even leave viewers with a lump in their throat.

All in all, though, I’d rather re-watch the cartoon with my kids — or better yet, re-read the book.

Content advisory: Mild crass humor.

Steven D. Greydanus is editor and  chief critic of DecentFilms.com.