REVIEW: Fantastic Mr. Fox

[Sheana_Molloy]

I've been blathering about it enough elsewhere, I figure I better say at least a few words about the movie here!

In short: Fantastic Mr. Fox is indeed pretty darn fantastic and I think (demand) that everybody needs to go see it while it's still in theaters. Show it support! It's a great animated movie, and a great family movie that is secretly a movie for adults. There's the usual focus on dialogue and character interaction that's Wes Anderson's thing, plus the sort of darkness, big words and general maturity that've been all too lacking from family entertainment these days (Ebert comments on this). I've heard Roald Dahl's widow liked it a lot, even with the creative liberties and big expansion on the original story, and I bet Mr. Dahl would've liked it a lot too. Certain things about it reminded me of the original Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory movie, which Dahl himself adapted for the screen. That is a good thing.

Honestly, this movie is the very definition of the word 'charming', which is a rare thing these days and not something I say often. Thinking about it days later I still have a big dumb grin on my face and can't get the movie's recurring rhyme (those horrible crooks, so different in looks...) out of my head. The art design and score/soundtrack are excellent, all the usual stuff you'd expect of Wes Anderson. It's got every single one of his usual tricks but the slow motion, which I imagine is too hard to pull off in something like this. The animation is very intriguing, it's stop motion, but the really old school rough style, nothing sleek and shiny and perfect like Selick movies. All sorts of cartoony tricks, from cotton and clay for effects to 2D side-scrolling backgrounds and actions. Quite the voice acting cast, too. Normally I'm grumpy about "big name" actors taking animation jobs away from professional voice actors, but since 90% of this movie's cast is the usual stable of Wes Anderson regulars, I'm inclined to let it go as just the director doing what he always does with the people he always works with. I'm not gonna say no to Bill Murray or Michael Gambon involvement, hah. There's even a certain Mr. Wally Wolodarsky as the voice of a main character!

If I have any complaints, it's that there's a few awkward moments here and there. There's something about Wes Anderson movies in general that's a little imperfect, or at least strange. There's also some aspects of it that might be a little jarring, especially to those not used to the style of this director. My mom for example didn't dislike the movie, but she did find it very bizarre. I've seen some people call it a sort of trademark awkwardness that he puts in his movies on purpose, which is a possibility. There's one or two scenes, one near the very end in particular, that seemed a little sudden and out of place to me, though maybe I just didn't parse them correctly on first viewing. One or two actors who you can tell aren't that used to voice acting, too. But really, these complaints are few and small, and didn't take away from my enjoyment very much. It also turned out that all the animals are voiced by Americans and all the humans are voiced by Brits, so it may have a bit of a "The Villains Are Always British" thing to some people, but I don't think that was done on purpose.

In conclusion, this is a very solid and entertaining little movie, where every little thing about it from the looks to music to humor/dialogue is grand and puts a smile on your face. It's been getting all sorts of good reviews from pretty much everywhere, and I think it's even Wes Anderson's most well-rated movie now, which is interesting to consider. I really hope it gets both a Best Animated Feature and a Best Score nomination! I hope it gets all sorts of nominations from various places, as a matter of fact. I'm also secretly hoping that it beats out Pixar, as good as Up is, but don't tell anybody. Go see it!

*There's also some construction equipment labeled as being made by the Malloy Brothers, which is a few extra points in its favor.

[Quazie89]

I'm really looking forward to watching this movie and I'm glad that you posted a review for it.
Unfortunately, it hasn't reached our theaters yet, so the waiting's killing me. I'm also hoping the movie will beat Up, which I thought was okay, but it wasn't as good as I thought it would be. Mr. Fox looks loads better.