Tom, I think this 👆 is an awesome beginning. Almost perfect, maybe I’m afraid too perfect.
I wish I had watched the film, for now, I used a bit of imagination based on your writing… so here come my fireballs.
Your landing:
“Since this is a kid’s movie from over fifty years ago, we’ll accept the handwaving of family-like structure implies wholesome sexual reproduction… In other words, Charlotte’s Web, in any of its incantations, is not a biological drama.”
The fact is, I didn’t watch it, so I may sound idiotic but when I read your piece, it felt fitting to end with things you missed as a boy of four or five. Perhaps you don’t recall them, or maybe you were too focused on being “a good friend and a writer.”
That would align more closely with your opening.
I also think it’s somewhat lengthy, and sprinkling humor always works.
You could have delivered a good, mature-writer rendition at the end with a reminiscent memory of you at four or five, but instead you went somewhere else to end your writing, biology.
