October 2009
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Fantastic Mr. Fox (PG)
Printed 21st October 2009

Fantastic Mr. Fox film 2009 sees the meeting and fusion of two fantastically-talented minds as auteur moviemaker extraordinaire Wes Anderson adapts beloved literary genius Roald Dahl. It’s arguable that not since Quentin Blake’s illustrations accompanied Dahl’s work has anyone so perfectly channelled the late, great children’s story writer either.

Of course purists may not agree (although the Dahl estate does) as Anderson has organically tailored the unique tale to suit his particular sensibilities. So, in other words, yes, this is somewhat of a dysfunctional family story. Ignoring the advice of his lawyer Badger, Mr. Fox uproots Mrs. Fox and son Ash into an expensive beech tree in sight of three farms belonging to the notorious Boggis, Bunce and Bean. Of course, before long, the domesticated Mr. Fox’s wild side is eager to be unleashed with so much temptation at paw.

Embarking upon a series of daring raids against the farmers with faithful possum pal Kylie as back-up, Mr. Fox makes a mockery of their security measures and his family eat like royalty for a short time as a result. Until the trio of stockmen, their ire and irk at losing livestock above-and-beyond boiling point, seek revenge and hatch a dastardly plot against the whole surrounding animal community. Trapped underground without enough food to survive, it’s up to Mr. Fox to come up with a fantastic plan to save them all and perhaps also get rid of the farmers for good.

A truly innovative and original animated tail (sic), Fantastic Mr. Fox is a lovingly hand-crafted, painstakingly-produced, stop-motion quite unlike any other. Henry Selick may be the master and Nick Park may be unrivalled by his peers, but a surprisingly hands-on, new-to-animation Wes Anderson shows enough skill and craft here to comfortably be mentioned in the same league as either of these two experts.

Visually inventive with incredibly intricate attention-to-detail, Fan Fox’s anthropomorphized animals inhabit a heightened, picture book-looking “real world” rather than a cartoony invented one. Beautifully-painted backdrops and hand-crafted props and set-pieces interact with twitchy, jittery, imperfectly moving puppets to create a rougher, choppier style of animation than perhaps we’re used to. This aesthetic approach, these imperfections, combined with the staccato, pause-heavy dialogue delivery style gives the film its singular identity however.

Providing the banterish dialogue and dry wit are some of Anderson’s “company of actors” (Bill Murray as Badger, Jason Schwartzman as Ash, Eric Anderson as cousin Kristofferson, a cameoing Owen Wilson as Whack-Bat coach Skip), alongside some perfectly-cast vocal talent led by the naturally-charismatic George Clooney as the caddish rogue Mr. Fox, who is ably supported by Meryl Streep as the brains behind the brains Mrs. Fox, Brian Cox as a TV reporter, a wonderful Wally Wolodarsky as Kylie, Willem Dafoe as the villainous Rat, Jarvis Cocker cameoing as bonfire singer Petey and, most notably, the dulcet tones of Michael Gambon as boss baddie Bean.

Enthralling and charming and quirky and, absolutely essentially, Andersonian, Fantastic Mr. Fox is something entirely unique and something really quite special. Some may grumble that its leaves them emotionally unattached to the proceedings (a problem repeatedly leveled at Anderson’s oeuvre that I personally don’t experience) but don’t let this put you off a one-of-a-kind movie-watching experience and the second great animation released this month alongside Pixar’s cinematic perfection Up. This is perhaps not one for the very young though, some of the action and dialogue skewed towards the more mature in the audience (just as, arguably, Dahl’s stories were themselves).

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