Reviews
Fantastic Mr. Fox
October 23 2009
Wes Anderson
Starring George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman
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“I guess underneath it all I just need to be loved,” muses Mr Fox as he contemplates the prospect of a ruined home, a kidnapped nephew and a marriage hanging by the thinnest of threads. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of Wes Anderson.
Anderson has been alienating fans for the better part of half a decade because he doesn’t care about being loved. After the intensity of experience contained in Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, his films retreated into East Coast pretension, mistaking archness for intelligence, irony for charm, and cynicism for wit.
Now at last he’s rediscovered his mojo – and in the most unlikely of circumstances. Fantastic Mr. Fox is Anderson and Noah Baumbach’s adaptation of the Roald Dahl classic. And what they’ve done with it is something close to alchemy.
The bare bones are intact: the cunning Mr Fox (voiced by George Clooney) steals from three wealthy farmers who lay siege to his home. A life-and-death battle of wits ensues, in which friends and family are caught in the crossfire. Feeling responsible for their wellbeing, Mr Fox conjures a daring plan to take the fight to the enemy. So far, so Dahl, but almost everything else has been radically reinterpreted.
Mr Fox himself is an urbane charmer, a reformed thief turned newspaper columnist who dresses like a nineteenth-century country gent (not unlike Anderson). Tired of ‘feeling poor’, he engages his lawyer, Badger (Bill Murray), to buy him a fine new property overlooking the farms of Boggis, Bunce and Bean – a daily temptation that sets Fox’s twin natures at war within.
All the quirks that seemed to stymie Anderson’s last two films here pay off in spades. Shooting in stunning low-fi stop-motion (a world away from Nick Park or Henry Selick), the director’s genius for production design comes to the fore. The sets are a treasure trove of quirky details, retro-gizmos and snarky in-jokes; Alexandre Desplat’s score is skillfully integrated into the action; while the herky-jerky animation gives the film a vintage, antique quality that offers a two-fingered salute to the genre’s CG technocrats.
The performances too are hugely likeable. George Clooney seems to have an almost instinctive grasp of voice acting; Bill Murray and Owen Wilson have enjoyable cameos; while Jason Schwartzman just about keeps a handle on the film’s most difficult role as Fox’s frustrated son.
The only question is whom the film is for. Anderson has given Dahl’s story a sensitive, sophisticated edge that’s not especially child friendly (although in fairness he’s also bolted on a Hollywood ending to keep them happy). The tension between nature and nurture, the bitterness of broken dreams, the failures of family, human vindictiveness, death and redemption… all are explored here, buried beneath the fake fur and button eyes.
Perhaps Anderson hasn’t changed at all, then. Perhaps this is just another film for the in-crowd – as arch and urbane as any other; as Fox himself. But then that’s the point: here it fits. It works. When the right filmmaker and the right subject matter come together the result is just like one of Farmer Bean’s apples – wrong-looking in every way, but with stars on it nonetheless.
Anticipation:
Enjoyment:
In Retrospect:
This is NOT a kids film. It's a simply We Anderson film made with stop-motion animation.
Can you imagine a 10 year-old watching Rushmore? Exactly. Fantastic Mr Fox totally plays laughs to 30 something critics but kids will be bored stiff.
Take your kids to see Up or Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs instead this half-term.
Written by John D on October 25th, 2009 at 14:47
I disagree, there were plenty of kids in the cinema when I saw it who were laughing and enjoying themselves and I overheard several children talking afterwards with their parents saying how much they enjoyed it and that it lived up to or bettered the book.
Just because the film is relatively sophisticated doesn't mean children will be bored by it, I get fed up of the endless films that talk down to kids as if they're idiots, as if somehow throwaway gags and wall to wall slapstick are all their little brains can comprehend (see pretty much any Studio Ghibli release to see how intelligent animated films for children can and should be done).
Fantastic Mr Fox has action, a good storyline, it's fast-paced enough to keep hold of a short attention span, and if the kids don't necessarily get all the jokes there's always the failsafe cute animals to fall back on.. How can you go wrong?
Written by Lindsay on October 25th, 2009 at 20:40
I'm with Lindsay here. My children (both six and a half) *loved* Fantastic Mr Fox as much as I did (although perhaps for different reasons). Even Sesame Street works on several levels (what pre-pubescent kid 'truly' appreciates parodies of Twin Peaks?), but it is no less entertainingly kid-friendly for all that. Besides, both Up and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs have their own fair share of adult content amidst all the splashes of colour.
Treating children a little bit like adults is part of how they become little adults – and they are capable of understanding a lot more than we often give them credit for. It could even be argued that all Wes Anderson's films are kids' films, on the basis that they all feature protagonists who are arrested, if not utterly infantilised, in their development. In any case, frankly I can imagine a ten-year-old watching – and enjoying – Rushmore, especially were it too presented in stop-motion animation… Maybe not all ten-year-olds, but then I know a good many adults who cannot watch or enjoy Wes Anderson films either.
Written by Anton Bitel on October 25th, 2009 at 21:26
Welll our kids loved it. 5 and 13 respectively. Not too many moves appeal to both of them and both of us.
I think if you're an adult who likes WA movies… chances are your kids will too.
(Rushmore was huge in our house… still is…)
The only weak element was the relatively straightforward story line. Tough to sustain an hour and a half, but the strength of all the other elements more than made up for it.
Fantastic
Written by Tommy Weir on October 25th, 2009 at 21:34
My daughter is 10 and really enjoyed it.
To be honest, I was thinking she'd be bored stupid (Existentialism gags – really?) but she wasn't.
It's very much a Wes Anderson film as opposed to a 'kids' film but his 'style' would appear to crossover. The animation is wonderful and, I guess, kids aren't as stupid as Hollywood would have us believe.
Great fun, but I agree that the narrative is stretched very thin. Still, narrative doesn't seem to be that important these days, did you see Zombieland?
Written by @fortunesfool73 on October 26th, 2009 at 17:17
Fair points. I really didn't think kids would get it at all. Maybe it's talking cute animals that keep the kids onside, even when it indulges in it's existentialism / Jarvis Cocker gags.
On the point of the stretched narrative… is Fantastic Mr Fox "… symptomatic of the painful death of the art of narrative cinema."? (to quote Mark Kermode talking about films of computer games)
Zombieland could also go in that category, however it mostly got away with it by being so much fun. It's almost totally empty though.
The Ice Age films are completely devoid of narrative… they're just a series of events! That's not a film!
Written by John D on October 26th, 2009 at 17:50
Thank you so much for making me search for that Sesame Street Twin Peaks parody. Wonderful stuff.
Personally I can't wait to see this film.
Written by doug1482 on October 26th, 2009 at 19:15
A narrative is precisely defined as 'a series of events'. If you want to watch a film 'completely devoid of narrative', I suggest Derek Jarman's Blue (with the sound turned off).
I think a distinction needs to be drawn between disliking a narrative, or finding a film 'empty' (both of which are obviously fine, and down to individual taste) and claiming that there is no narrative at all (which is simply preposterous in the case of all the titles listed above). And if we are going to talk about 'thinness', the narrative in Anderson's film is considerably more developed than the one found in Dahl's novella…
Written by Anton Bitel on October 26th, 2009 at 19:24
They just did a great parody of Mad Men also…
Written by Lim Salt on October 27th, 2009 at 13:29
Love the film. So what if this is a Wes Anderson typical film turned animation? It was rated pg, same with Spider-man, Fantastic Four, and all the other heroes movies meant for children. Duh! Is it much more difficult to explain to kids terms like "existentialism" and "foreclosure" or Jarvis Cockers' cameo (his song number got the most laughs from kids, btw) than the violence surrounding some youth-based releases. My kid is not that dumb to understand the dialogues.
Written by Roxanne on November 16th, 2009 at 07:13