Fantastic Mr. Fox
A lot of reviews have talked about how idiosyncratic filmmakers Spike Jonze and Wes Anderson each have their own “family” film in theatres this fall (Jonze with “Where the Wild Things Are,” Anderson with this film). I’d rather express my gratitude for filmmakers of their originality for taking the chance in the first place. Whenever a feature director expands into such offbeat (for them) forms (like when Richard Linklater did “Waking Life” and “A Scanner Darkly,” and when Martin Scorsese or Spike Lee have made a documentary), the results are generally exciting and kind of liberating, even if they sometimes fall flat.
Thankfully, Anderson is a tremendously gifted and original filmmaker, and his fingerprints and distinctive voice are all over “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” which he adapted with “Squid and the Whale” director Noah Baumbach from the story by Roald Dahl. That he chose a uniquely tactile and singular form of stop-motion animation (less “Nightmare Before Christmas,” more 1933 “King Kong”) is significant to his success.
Leading the cast is George Clooney, whose Mr. Fox is a wily one, a career criminal who had to settle down when his wife (the lovely and delicious Meryl Streep) was pregnant with their son Ash (Anderson regular Jason Schwartzman in a fantastic deadpan turn). But he yearns for a better life than they’ve got right now, so they move into a tree above ground. But Mr. Fox gets an itch he can’t scratch when he sees the farms of Boggis, Bunce and Bean, and with the help of a minnow catching opossum named Kylie (former “Simpsons” writer Wally Wolodarsky), a master plan is hatched, leading to an inter-species war when the farmers (led by Bean, voiced with evil relish by Michael Gambon) exact revenge.
Anderson’s approach doesn’t pander- like both versions of Dahl’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” (the original starring Gene Wilder and Tim Burton’s 2005 reimagining), he’s made Dahl’s quirky tale come to life in a family film full of sarcastic and dry wit. It fits right in with his previous efforts, from his offbeat feature debut “Bottle Rocket” to his 1998 classic “Rushmore” (where he first worked with Schwartzman and Bill Murray, who plays Fox’s lawyer Badger with his customary skepticism), and even the dysfunctional families of “The Royal Tenenbaums” (his last writing collaboration with Owen Wilson, who plays Coach Skip here) and “The Darjeeling Limited.”
He doesn’t move any of the characters himself, but through his collaborators’ efforts, Anderson has created a distinctive universe that is entirely his in sight and sound (with songs from the likes of The Beach Boys and Jarvis Cocker finding their way through the wonderfully loopy score by Alexandre Desplat). The film works wonders with both verbal and visual humor and heart, with Clooney’s swagger and sometimes shaggy charm putting skip in this Fox’s step. The result is animated movie magic that goes with the very best animated films of recent years.
