This is what I've been looking for this year. Generally this is what I look for every year actually. Kids films that aren't dumbed down and take easy roads to get to simple and easy conclusions. At the same the ones that don't do that (i.e. 99% of Pixar films) I still try to find something more spirited in them. I've learned that with Pixar and some other animated films that it's as much about the director and writers as it is with any film. For example Brad Bird's two Pixar creations
"The Incredible
s" and
"Ratatouille" have almost exactly what I look for in those sort of movies. Their smart and funny and don't fall prey to idiotic topical jokes. The same is to be said of
"Fantastic Mr. Fox" which more than lives up to it's name.
Director Wes Anderson very much put himself into this animated tale that uses little to no CGI and is done in good ole' stop motion animation. Meaning this 93 minute film took a few years to complete just half of it. For it's meat it gives you the story of Mr. Fox (George Clooney) and his family and friends (the other animals in the forest). Mr. Fox is a retired chicken thief who against the advice of his badger lawyer (Bill Murray) buys a tree just on the outskirts of three mean and ugly farmers, Boggis, Bunce and Bean. Mr. Fox decided however to come out of retirement for one last score with his new superintendent Kylie (Wally Wolodarsky). After his score keeps getting bigger and bigger and his wife (Meryl Streep) finds out and grills him for it, the three villains team up to hunt down and kill him and all the other creatures without mercy.
There you have it. There's a kids film with meat... real meat. It's spiced up with just how interesting and funny all these characters are. Ash (Jason Swartzman) is Mr. Fox's son (I'd say he's about 13 years old) who desperately wants to be thought of as an athlete, something that gets difficult after the arrival of Kristopherson (Eric Anderson). Kristopherson is his cousin and in many ways is what Ash wants to be. Thus he treats him like crap most of the time. What's funniest about Ash is just how he's portrayed and how accurate it really is real children. He complains, tries to find excuses out of things and most importantly acts and speaks without thinking of the repercussions. He also spits a lot which I found funny because growing up ALL guys spit like crazy around that age. As for Clooney as Mr. Fox... well who better really? The man has some of the best comedic timing and droll mannerism that's slink through to his character perfectly. It's no wonder why he's as acclaimed an actor as he is, just like Streep and just like Williem Dafoe who plays a security guard rat for Bean. Then there's the trillion other characters that all have their brief moments to shine and make you at the bare minimum smile.
Anderson co-wrote the screenplay with Noah Baumbach (as usual cohort in Anderson's pictures) and it's very much their way of storytelling. In fact the only thing I didn't see that's a staple of Wes Anderson's films is a slow motion walk by sequence. Would've been interesting though... it really would've been. So now I come to the biggest question which is what is it's cultural significance. I ask this because in a lot of good kids films they're here one minute and gone the next leaving a pile of merchandise in it's wake and nothing else. Then there are the few upper crust kids films like Spike Jonze's "Where the Wild Things Are",which is what I'll be comparing this with. My review stands from October still stand for how I feel about that film. I honestly feel no better or worse about the film and it still is good, but emotionally empty. "Fantastic Mr. Fox" is in a sense what I wanted with 'WTWTA'. It has emotion and humor and intelligence. 'Wild Things...' was packed with split ideas and thus split emotions that were meaningful yet lacked real meaning sometimes as a child would be emotional and not always have a solid reason. That worked against it for me and while loved the ending piece it still left me empy. "Fantastic Mr. Fox" on the flip side has it's emotional quality, but it doesn't wear it on it's sleeve. These tiny characters tell stories about love, responsibility, family, growing up and it's done so in Anderson's classic view of people and interactions that's only slightly more hyper than it really is. These things allow kids to see it and grow with it so that they get the jokes they used love are still there, but then they find other things funny as well and see the meanings. To a certain extent I feel like 'Wild Things...' tried to have a lot of meaning and it fell flat or perhaps it was the dreaded spinning plate issue and Jonze couldn't keep them all going by the end.
Either way it's a good film, but I found "Fantastic Mr. Fox" to be great. It's great looking, feeling and flowing. It's funny and intelligent and funny in it's own intelligence and sometimes purposeful lack of intelligence ("I'm getting a high frequency radio signal through a can!" one character says during the big final rescue mission). The sad thing is that as great as this is, I just don't feel that it's going to hit it's audience this winter. I think "Fantastic Mr. Fox" may have to settle for DVD and hopeful cult status among hipsters to keep it floating. That last part actually makes me saddest than any of it.
"Fantastic Mr. Fox" **** out of ****
