FANTASTIC MR. FOX: REVIEW

Joy. That is the feeling one gets watching THE FANTASTIC MR. FOX.

Joy at the wonderful strangeness of the characters, who are flawed and stiffly animated and selfish and yet so human. They are also wild animals.

Joy that you are watching a movie unlike any other, but with the added bonus that you don't want to slit your wrists at the end. (See the brilliant but horrifically sad ARE, WHERE THE WILD THINGS)

Joy that now there are two stop-motion animation masterpieces produced in the same year. (CORALINE is the other.)

Joy that Wes Anderson has broken out of his tunnel-vision, working in a new medium and actually having a plot, while still keeping all of his essential Wes Anderson-ness.

Joy that you're watching the second-best Roald Dahl adapation of all time. This is no small achievement, considering how many have tried and failed to capture the right tone of his work. (No prizes for guessing the best adaptation.)

And finally, joy that this is the first children's movie where they found to way to have the little woodland creatures swear with impunity, and yet offend no one. I'd tell you how they do it, but it's too good of a secret to spill. Let's just say it's more sophisticated than bleeping, and more fun, too.

FANTASTIC MR. FOX is a toy box of a movie, overflowing with invention, random adventure, real fun and good cheer. The plot is a lark, basically a 90 minute roadrunner and coyote story, only replace the road-runner with George Clooney as a fox named Mr. Fox, and the coyote with Michael Gambon as the most hateful hunter in the county, named Bean.

At one point, threatening letters are exchanged between the two nemisi:

Bean: Why did he send us a letter written with letters cut out of a magazine?

Underling: Well, you did the same thing when you sent your letter to him.

Bean: I don't trust this guy.

It all got started because Fox decided to steal some chickens, geese and hard cider from the farmes Boggis, Bunce and Bean, respectively. The Farmers decide to shoot Fox for his trouble, but only get his tail. Fox decides to tunnel all of their chickens, geese and hard cider. The Farmers come back with bulldozers. Eventually, all out war is waged between the animals and the farmers.

The plot is a lark, but it's more plot than Wes Anderson has usually gotten involved with, and it is enough to hang scene after scene of comic invention. A few thoughts sneak in, surprisingly deep ones, but don't worry: the life lessons are kept to a minimum.

The voice work is top drawer, not only in terms of talent (how often do you get Meryl Streep to play your straight man?), but that talent is actually used to create fantasitc characters, as supposed to creating a fish who looks like Will Smith and sounds just like Will Smith. (See TALE, SHARK) Consider Bill Murray as the badger lawyer named Badger. Badger is not just memorable because he's a badger in a suit that sounds just like Bill Murray, but because he actually tries to give good lawyerly advice. And when the advice doesn't work, he snarls and tries to claw his clients. He's also a demolition expert, which provokes this exchange:

Fox: Demolition Expert? What? Since when?

Badger: Since forever!

There's a nice current that runs through the story about wild animals trying to be civilized, reverting to wild-ness and then apologizing later. At least they apologize when they rever, I'll take these animals over the farmers anyday: Boggis eats 12 whole chickens a day, Bunce only eats donuts stuffed with foie de gras, and Bean employs a Rat with a switchblade to protect his hard cider. That last one doesn't sound so bad, until you realize the Rat has the voice of Willem Dafoe. When you send a Rat with a switchblade and the voice of Willem Dafoe after someone's children, as Bean does here, you are basically FedExing nightmares to children everyone. The farmers are so hateful, the children have a little song that they sing about how bad they are. Badger knows, he has it on file at his law office.


Tying the whole thing together is Clooney as Mr. Fox, who is one of the more appealing protganists of animated film history. He the talent and brilliant-but-doomed visions of Jack Skellington, the family dynamics and mid-life crisis drama of Mr. Incredible, with the same swagger as the Disney Fox Robin Hood. In other words, he's smart, ambitious, cocky, makes mistakes, doesn't listen, but is capable of invention and genius and can get you out of a tight spot. He's probably somehow related to the Disney family, as when we first meet him he's listening to the Davy Crockett theme song.

The actual animation style is blocky, awkward and rough. And it's gorgeous. Sure, it looks like it was done by kids over a year in their basement, and that's the charm. As rough and tumble as it is, it gives the world of animated movies new life in this age of pixels. Pixar can only make one movie a year, and while waiting for it we have to wade through the MONSTERS VS. ALIENS, SHARK TALE, PLANET 51, CHICKEN LITTLE, SHREK 3, OPEN SEASON, ICE AGE 1 and 2 AND 3, and on and on.

THE FANTASTIC MR. FOX has everything that a Roald Dahl story has: humour, meaning, beauty, a dash of darkness, a touch of cruelty, just desserts for the nasty people and hope for the good ones. But more than that, it makes you feel good, and not in obvious ways. It has characters you want to get to know better. It features lots of woodland creatures dancing, not because they can dance well or in time, but because it's good to be alive and dancing is fun. It has a man on a banjo for little to no reason. And it ends on an oddly quiet but perfect beat, with a tiny speech that is more inspiring than it has to be or wants to be. In short, it is the best movie I've seen all year.

RATING: * * * * * (out of 5 Stars)

P.S. The woodland creatures also have a game called Whackbat. Owen Wilson is on hand, as Coach Otter, to explain the game:

"Basically, there's three grabbers, three taggers, five twig runners, and a player at Whackbat. Center tagger lights a pine cone and chucks it over the basket and the whack-batter tries to hit the cedar stick off the cross rock. Then the twig runners dash back and forth until the pine cone burns out and the umpire calls 'hotbox!'. Finally, you count up however many score-downs it adds up to and divide that by nine."

There are helpful diagrams with lines and X's and O's that go along with the speech. If this doesn't make you smile, I don't know what to tell you.