Oh my god! It’s George Clooney again. There is probably no better sign of a film’s quality than being on an end of year list, when the film has come out early in that year. “Fantastic Mr. Fox”, my friends, came out on the first day of 2010, and here it is at number four on this list. I guess that means this is a good one, folks.
When Wes Anderson first announced that he was adapting the Roald Dahl children’s book, it was around the same time that Spike Jonze announced his own children’s book adaptation, “Where The Wild Things Are” (amazingly the films premiered two days apart from one another in the U.S). It was really weird, because here we had two of the U.S’s most distinct voices in cinema, both committing to projects that were clearly different than either had tried before, and the target audience was going to be children. As strange as it was, it was equally exciting. As my list last year showed, I was quite the fan of Spike Jonze’s effort, but what Wes Anderson has done here with “Fantastic Mr. Fox” is another thing entirely.
This film is truly magical and I do not use that term lightly. The differences between the two films are obvious, “Where The Wild Things Are” is quite a dark (in tone) film, while “Fantastic Mr. Fox” is the complete opposite, in fact there are a number of times when the characters in the film just stop and have a dance, it is fun, fun, fun. However the biggest difference is the fact that “Fantastic Mr. Fox” is an animated film, but thankfully it is not the computer animation that is the norm these days (and which I am boring of, to be honest), but the old form of stop motion animation.
When a live action director takes on an animated feature, I often find it strange, and wonder whether or not the director’s style will be able to shine through (for example, Rob Zombie’s “The Haunted World Of El Superbeasto” felt nothing like a Rob Zombie film previous). Make no mistake though, this film is a Wes Anderson film through and through. From the snappy dialogue to his amazing and quirky visual style, you would never mistake this film as made by anyone else. Even his regular colour schemes of yellows and browns are prominent again in this animated marvel. Marvel is the correct term too, because the animation is so superb and incredibly detailed. You can see each tiny hair on the foxes, badgers or whatever other animal is on screen. The voice talent is also fantastic (oh, I am so funny), with George Clooney playing the title character, with such vitality and energy. He is brilliant and so very funny too. If “The American” showed us a new George Clooney, “Fantastic Mr. Fox” brings us back the familiar, comedic George that we all know and love.
Meryl Streep plays Mrs. Fox (in a role that would normally go to Angelica Huston) and she is really fine, she just fits in perfectly. The rest of the roles are littered with Anderson regulars like Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman and Adrien Brody, with Willem Dafoe also playing an evil rat, that ends up in a hilarious homage to “West Side Story”. In fact if you are seriously into movies, you will get a whole lot more out of this film, as there are a lot of film jokes and homage’s throughout, including the funniest “Rebel Without A Cause” joke that I have ever seen. There is also a very funny recurring joke where the characters use the word “cuss” instead of saying a swear word (“Are you cussing with me?), it even goes so far as when we see some graffiti on a bridge and the word “cuss” is spray-painted on it.
As much as it might seem like a departure from the regular Wes Anderson films, “Fantastic Mr. Fox” shares a lot of the director’s favourite themes which usually have to do with dysfunctional families.
One other thing that I would like to mention, a few months after I saw this film, I had the chance to watch a charming little French silent short film from 1927 called “Le Rat De Ville Et Le Rat Des Champs” (The Town Rat and The Country Rat). This film is also done in stop motion animation, and is very similar in style to “Fantastic Mr. Fox”, so much so that it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Wes Anderson used this film as inspiration for the look of his film.
Overall, I am a massive fan of this film, but then I am a massive fan of Wes Anderson so it didn’t really come as a surprise (believe it or not, this is not my favourite film of his, that honour goes to “The Life Aquatic…”), but it was great to see that his style translates even to an animated film. I recommend this to absolutely everyone, and yes, that includes kids too.
Ranked 4 in Top 25 of 2010
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