Reviewed by Holly Williams
Stars the voices of George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Wally Wolodarsky, Eric Anderson, Michael Gambon, Willem Dafoe, Owen Wilson, Jarvis Cocker
Written by Wes Anderson & Noah Baumbach
Certification UK PG | US PG
Runtime 87 minutes
Directed by Wes Anderson
Wes Anderson’s latest offering has been hailed as a return to form – even as it marks his first outing in a new form: stop-motion animation. The king of quirk, whose previous films include The Royal Tennenbaums and The Darjeeling Limited, here adapts Roald Dahl’s much-loved children’s book. While stop-motion technology has been getting continually slicker and smoother over the years, Anderson opts instead for a rather home-made, scruffy style. As those familiar with his off-beat movies – and with Dahl’s stories, themselves hardly cosy fairytales – might expect, the slightly jarring animation style suits the material. There is something a little weird about anthropomorphizing animals, and Anderson lets this strangeness surface rather than going all Disney on us (though keep a look out for the odd reference to Disney’s foxy Robin Hood).
Anderson is a big Dahl fan, and won over Dahl’s widow to get the rights, even co-writing the movie with Noah Baumbach while staying at Dahl’s old home. But obviously this slim children’s’ book doesn’t have enough material for a feature length movie, and is greatly elaborated on. While Anderson certainly does justice to Dahl’s tale of the cunning fox who takes on three mean poultry farmers, even keeping some original chapter titles to give a storybook feel, when he embroiders the back story we’re in seemingly very different territory. Dysfunctional families, rivalry between relations and oddball characters are Anderson staples, but here they manage to somehow slide easily into a story about chicken-stealing foxes. The relationship between Mr. Fox’s awkward misfit son Ash (who wears a towel as a cape and is rubbish at sports) and his visiting cousin who turns out to be a ‘natural’ at everything Ash fails in feels like familiar Anderson ground.
It also feels distinctly unlike your standard children’s film fare, and in many ways this is a movie for grown ups. It’s low on slapstick silliness, high on quirk, visual detail, and wry comedy arising from animals in human situations (there are estate agents promoting tree living, and moans about not getting mobile signal in underground burrows). The cast is superb, but again seems designed to please adult movie buffs, who can enjoy a game of spot-the-Anderson-regular: Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray and Owen Wilson lend their voices alongside Meryl Streep and George Clooney, who is perfect as the sly but charming, wily but wild Mr. Fox. There’s even a cameo from Jarvis Cocker, as a banjo-playing baddie. And that’s one thing that might grate – in true Hollywood style all the good guys are American while the villains are Brits (with the exception of a genuinely creepy, cider-crazed, red-eyed rat, voiced in a sinister Southern drawl by Willem Dafoe).
The story is still has its soppy moments, but generally Fantastic Mr. Fox strikes a very happy medium: it’s more accessible than your average love-it-or-loathe it Anderson movie, but is also stranger, more interesting and imaginative, than your average children’s film. And that is a pretty fantastic thing.