REVIEW: ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’

By their very nature, film directors are an odd, curious lot. They spend years crafting dozens of hours of film footage (or, lately, digital files) into a theatrical experience. Most directors have to curb their oddity when presenting a film to the public, but not Wes Anderson. He’s made a career of odd, acerbic character studies such as “Rushmore,” The Life Aquatic” and “The Royal Tenenbaums,” and he’s now branching out into animated fare with the stop-motion “Fantastic Mr. Fox.”

Adapted from the Roald Dahl tale of a fox that can’t ignore his need to be a thieving predator, “Fantastic Mr. Fox” is visually stunning. The care and craft Anderson employs in bringing the various animal and human characters to life is nothing short of astonishing. Each scene is so intricately constructed, the eye can’t take it all in. The peril of doing a stop-motion big screen feature is that the audience will simply get tired of the gag, but there’s no such worry necessary with “Fox.”

When Mr. Fox (voiced by George Clooney) decides that he simply can’t stand keeping the promise he made to Mrs. Fox – that he would stop stealing chickens and produce from the nearby farmers and settle down to provide for his family, it sets off a battle with a nasty triumvirate of farmers, led by Frankiln Bean (Michael Gambon). Bean, Boggis and Bunce won’t rest until Mr. Fox is dead and stuffed, and all of the animals in the forest are endangered in the process. While Fox is amazingly clever, he must outdo himself to save his marriage, his family and his friends.

Mr. Fox and Friends

While it’s easily the most accessible film he’s done, Wes Anderson still lets his freak flag fly in “Fantastic Mr. Fox.” There’s a family dynamic between Mr. Fox, his wife, Mrs. Fox (Meryl Streep), his underachieving and moderately bitter son Ash (Jason Schwartzman) and his more promising nephew Kristofferson (Eric Chase Anderson) that could only exist in a Wes Anderson movie. The woodland creatures in Anderson’s tale are columnists, lawyers, real estate agents, students and handymen – yet they’re still animals who forage and eat in the ways you’d expect to see foxes, badgers, rats and opossums do. It’s a juxtaposition that takes a little getting used to, and Anderson plays it up to excellent comic effect.

“Fantastic Mr. Fox” is a brilliant movie that isn’t afraid to make audiences meet it in the middle, between a “safe” family film and a character study of what it’s like to come to terms with your nature. While Wes Anderson is still uncompromisingly “quirky,” he’s come to terms with his nature as well.