Film: Fantastic Mr.Fox
Directed By: Wes Anderson
Rating: 3.5/5
Written By: Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach; Based on the book by Roald Dahl
Runtime: 87 minutes
MPAA Rating: Rated PG for action, smoking and slang humor
Mr. Fox – George Clooney
Mrs. Fox – Meryl Streep
Ash – Jason Schwartzman
Badger – Bill Murray
Kylie – Wallace Wolodarsky
Kristofferson – Eric Anderson
Franklin Bean – Michael Gambon
Walter Boggis – Robin Hurlstone
Nathan Bunce – Hugo Guinness
Rat – Willem Dafoe
Weasel – Wes Anderson
Coach Skip – Owen Wilson
In a renaissance year of sorts for traditionally animated features, with the original 1980’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles coming back in an animated feature, Disney bringing back traditional hand-drawn animation to the forefront with Princess And The Frog, Hayao Miyazaki delivering another masterpiece in Ponyo, you have a bit of an oddity with Fantastic Mr. Fox. Fantastic Mr. Fox is traditionally animated not by hand, but by stop-motion technique – objects that are moved frame by frame and brought to life, you know like Gumby. Fantastic Mr. Fox is based on a classic story by the late great author Roald Dahl. Except the kick is at the helm is one of modern cinema’s more curious auteurs, Wes Anderson. But how does Anderson approach such material where an adult Fox (Clooney) is no longer content in living a normal life working a 9-5 job and decides to scheme a heist against the local evil farmers Bean (Gambon), Boggis (Hurlstone), and Bunce (Guinness)? Not to mention making it at a PG rating, uncharted territory for a director like Anderson.
The answer is that Anderson takes the basic characters and story Dahl wrote and pretty much jettisons the rest. In this show filled with talking animals and critters, Anderson is in charge and fully running this show. All of Anderson’s old tricks, conventions, and techniques prevalent in his previous works are incorporated into this movie. So those dollhouse type of setting tracking shots are in. The existential dialogue and Anderson-esque banter, and of course Anderson’s staple of returning thespians. This also very much sounds like a Wes Anderson film with his typically rather eclectic tastes mixing oldies, pop, and also some folk and bluegrass style music. This movie is firmly stamped as a Wes Anderson film. This might anger the faithful of Roald Dahl. I still talk to people who thought the original Willy Wonka movie was a terrible and disgraceful adaptation of Dahl’s “Charlie And The Chocolate Factory,” believing the Burton version to be the more faithful, superior interpretation of Dahl’s work. The feeling here seems to be that Anderson is less interested in servicing or writing a love letter to Dahl’s work but rather using Dahl’s work to service and better exploit his own ideas and style of filmmaking.
What’s charming and enjoyable about the movie is that even though it’s PG and essentially a children’s story, Anderson never dumbs the material down or talks down to the audience much like the recent, Where The Wild Things Are movie did not either. The dialogue at times goes a little too much for the banter Anderson is known for, but it never becomes absolute pandering garbage like say G-Force or Transformers
2. So where Anderson succeeds is generally incorporating his style into a PG-rated children’s story without compromising the integrity or the story or Anderson’s style in itself.
The cast all handle their roles very well. The absolute show stealer is Willem Dafoe as the hippest, coolest villain of the year, simply called Rat. Rat is an old rival of Mr. Fox who now moonlights as Farmer Bean’s security guard. Whenever Rat’s onscreen the movie suddenly becomes 100 times cooler than it has any right to be. Even cooler than comedy superstar Bill Murray, who was also live in attendance at the premiere screening I attended at Graumann’s Chinese Theater along with the Andersons and Schwartzman, as Mr. Fox’s badger lawyer who knows demolition as a hobby. Mr. Fox’s son, Ash (Schwartzman), must contend with being in the shadow of his visiting cousin, Kristofferson (Eric Anderson). Kristofferson is more or less the ideal athletic son that Mr. Fox probably wants. Mr. Fox even has Kristofferson escort him on his heists against the farmers. Ash tries, but he’s more of a runt type that enjoys reading comic books.
The stop motion animation has an interesting look to it. There’s a slight rustic-ness to it if you will. This is not the smoother more fluid type of stop motion animation you usually see these days. There’s a certain choppiness and almost jagged movement in the animation. This seems much more like old school Rankin & Bass than say Tim Burton or Seth Green stuff.