Children’s beloved sneaky fox created by Roald Dahl comes to life in a stop-motion masterpiece, “Fantastic Mr. Fox”, created by director Wes Anderson for a mass-market audience catering to all ages.
George Clooney lends his voice to the red-haired rogue who despite his promise to retire from chicken rustling to his wife (Meryl Streep), can’t resist the call of the wild and eventually returns to his sneaky ways. Shortly after moving to a new den, he’s back to his old tricks raiding farms owned by farmers Boggis, Bunce and Bean. “One fat, one short, one lean. These horrible crooks, so different in looks, were nonetheless equally mean” as they were fondly called.
His nocturnal secrets later on cause trouble with Mrs. Fox while his sulky son (Jason Schwarzman) feels left out when his athletic cousin Kristofferson is chosen to go on the raids over him. Joining the team with their voices are regulars Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, Anjelica Huston and Willem Dafoe as wild animals.
Shooting in stunning low-fi stop-motion, his animal and human characters have a slight jerkiness where you feel the presence of the artists behind the screen, the life force. Instead of people, Anderson replaces them with puppets providing the kids vibe highly needed by the film. Together with his co-writer, Noah Baumbach, the duo team up to inject subplots, characters, and themes to Dahl’s tale that are not what you’d exactly call impressive. However, the film makes up with their overall look, incorporating sets infused with quirky details, retro-gizmos, and snarky in-jokes, keeping your eyes roaming the frames and laughing in surprise at unexpected jokes. The herky-jerky animation infused a vintage, antique quality to the film with Alexandre Desplat’s score complementing the sequences at their best.
Performances of the cast were hugely likeable with Bill Murray and Owen Wilson dropping enjoyable cameos and Jason Schwartzman taking a good hold of the most difficult role in the film as the Fox’s frustrated son. Clooney and Streep have done the best work on their characters amongst all. Together they helped voice the film’s virtues above all, that despite animals were the main focus of the film, human characteristics and attitudes were infused in them to tackle common issues encountered in a family.
The biggest question and drawback of the film is its intended audience. Anderson’s take on Dahl’s story is not exactly child-friendly with several adult issues too openly tackled including: the tension between nature and nurture, the bitterness of broken dreams, the failures of family, human vindictiveness, death and redemption. Children may leave cinemas buzzing happily about the appearance of characters and the sets, coupled with confused minds, as to what exactly was the fox talking about in the whole film. Adults meanwhile, would exit surprisingly enlightened by an adaptation of a children’s story.
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