I wished I’d had a child with me at the screening of Fantastic Mr Fox, as it’s difficult to know how they’ll take it. It’s not the old fashioned stop motion animation that’s the problem, but that there’s a sense of Wes Anderson’s idiosyncratic film being designed more for knowing adults who’ll enjoy its nostalgic charms than for wide-eyed children.
The youngest kids will probably enjoy its bright colours and humour, while older youngsters might warm to its family themes, but it may leave those in the middle slightly perplexed, and many will find it a bit static for their tastes. That said, when the action does come, it is a lot of fun.
By necessity the film takes the rather bare-bones plot of Roald Dahl’s book and expands on it (while being almost ridiculously keen to pay homage to Dahl). Here Fantastic Mr Fox (George Clooney) has given up stealing chickens to become a family man, and is now a newspaper columnist. However he knows that at heart he’s a wild animal and decides to slyly go for one last big job, which puts him on a collision course with farmers Boggis, Bunce, and Bean. The result is pretty much an all-out war between the humans and the woodland animals.
George Clooney and Meryl Streep are on top form as Mr Fox and his wife, while the rest of the starry voice cast, including Bill Murray, Adrien Brody, Owen Wilson, Willem Dafoe, Brian Cox, Anjelica Huston and even Jarvis Cocker, all acquit themselves well. Only Jason Schwartzman as Mr Fox’s son Ash hits a bit of a bum note. He has a great subplot, where he’s trying to live up to his ‘fantastic’ father and wants to be athlete, even though he isn’t particularly good. However Schwartzman’s delivery of the lines often seems too knowing, which slightly undermines the power of the story.
Like most Wes Anderson movies, Fantastic Mr Fox will leave some people cold. Despite being animated, the film undoubtedly feels like an Anderson movie, full of the same humour, eccentricities and interest in imperfect father figures and dysfunctional families that the director has explored in everything from Rushmore to The Life Aquatic. In fact his movie are all starting to resemble each other so much that Wes almost needed to turn to animation just so that at least there’s a vaguely fresh feel (although perhaps not as much as you might expect). Those who haven’t warmed to his retro-wit and individual worldview before probably won’t here, despite the furry creatures on show.
Although initially I found the animation a little off-putting, partly because the constantly moving fur and jerky movements were a little distracting, I quickly fell for its charm. Anderson apparently pretty much banned the colour green, which is a bold step for a movie set in a wood, but the result is a riot of beautiful autumnal colours. Visually the whole thing seems immensely outdated yet oddly modern, thrown together yet rather elegant.
But despite the great visual look, Fantastic Mr Fox is an animated film that kids are only likely to mildly enjoy, with much of it going over their heads. Even with adults it’ll be easier for them to appreciate the film than fall in love with it. Anderson has all sorts of interesting ideas about family dynamics, such as Mr. Fox’s battle between being a wild animal and a stable family man (only to have a slight realisation at the end that maybe he isn’t as genuinely wild as he thought), but it’s still easier to say ‘I see what they’re doing there’, than to really feel it.
The movie feels a bit like Anderson’s indulgence, but it’s easy enough to go along with it (and at only 86 minutes, it certainly doesn’t outstay its welcome), even if it’s difficult to see the movie really being loved by anyone beyond the director’s pre-existing retro-cool audience.
Overall Verdict: Fantastic Mr Fox is an interesting stop-motion experiment that works visually, but is easier to like than love.
Reviewer: Phil Caine
