DVD REVIEW: FANTASTIC MR. FOX

I'm going to shock a few people with this opener: besides "Fantastic Mr. Fox" I've never seen a Wes Anderson film. Feel free to take some time to gasp, I know, it's surprising.  No "Rushmore," no "Royal Tenenbaums," nothing.  I myself find it a little puzzling, but a quick analysis on IMDb clears things up a little, they're all rated R up to "Fantastic Mr. Fox."  If this film is any indication of Anderson's work, I know for sure he'll become my new favorite director.

He already is, but I suppose it isn't fair to judge on one film alone.  But based on his trailers, a theme is steadily approaching in my mind, full of quirkiness and men wearing tweed jacket, and Owen Wilson.  Like Scorsese and Tarantino, I see Anderson reuses many of his stars, and the Rotten Tomatoes ratings don't lie, you know, he's fairly acclaimed.  I'm reviewing one of his best rated films, and one of my favorite animated films, because of his current film "Moonrise Kingdom" is out now.

I recently re-watched "Mr. Fox" over the Memorial Day weekend with family, anxious of what their reaction would be.  To me "Mr. Fox" was directed at a very specific audience: teenagers who love quirky films.  That's pretty explicit.  The type I'm talking about is the SpongeBob generation, and if you're not a part of the SpongeBob generation: 1. I feel sorry for you, and 2. I'll let you know what the SpongeBob generation is:

It's kids who are old enough to watch classic episodes of SpongeBob in the present and laugh hysterically the nonsensical, absurd humor we grew up on watching it in our youth.  The SpongeBob generation goes through three phases:

1. Youth- Loving SpongeBob, mainly for his laugh and all the colors
2. Tween- Catching reruns of SpongeBob and dismissing them as juvenile
3. Teen- Revisiting SpongeBob and howling to the point of tears at the silliness of the show

The third group of the SpongeBob generation is what I assumed was the demographic for "Fantastic Mr. Fox;" realizing how ridiculous and silly it can get, but laughing anyway.  I obviously was wrong, the entire family loved it and I laughed almost as hard as I did when I originally saw it in 2010, and I rarely laugh out loud at the movies, especially animated ones which are mostly clever laughs then belly laughs.

"Fantastic Mr. Fox," for those who aren't acquainted with the legendary 1970 children's novel by Roald Dahl, is the tale of a feisty male fox and his family, and how they go up against three horrible farmers, Boggis, Bunce and Bean.  The film brilliantly uses the names as its first image, with the schoolyard taunt thrown at the farmers:

"Boggis and Bunce and Bean

One fat, one short, one lean

These horrible crooks

So different in looks

Are nonetheless equally mean"

That's a great opener; my family's reaction was: "Huh?"  Anderson gets you intrigued from the very start, then moving to a in-all-meanings-of-the-word fantastic Mr. Fox played fanTAStically by George Clooney.  He's a thief, trying to provide food for his family. After a job goes bad and he learns Mrs. Fox (voiced so elegantly by Meryl Streep) is prego, he vows to end his life of "crime."  But, two years later, (12 in fox years) his nephew Kristofferson stops by, and things get a whole lot crazier from there.

The hilariously eccentric Kylie

Featuring some great work from Bill Murray as a badger and Jason Schwartzman as Fox's envious, oddball son Ash, the movie never crosses the obnoxiously quirky line so many hipsters have developed nowadays.  It has its quirks, but its feet stay planted firmly in good-natured comedy and non sequiturs.  For instance, when Mr. Fox and his friend Kylie are about to climb a fence with an electric-shock warning, Kylie says something like: "Oh if it's just lightning that's fine. I hope it's not thunder.  I have a phobia of that."  The delivery and dialogue of these animals is incredible, and don't even get me started on the look of the puppets.  The attention to stop-motion detail in each creatures face is unthinkably gorgeous, and the autumn pallet Anderson uses is a whimsically artistic decision.

Should "Fantastic Mr. Fox" be one of your kids first movies?  That's all up to you, it features no swearing besides a heated discussion Mr. Fox and Badger have where they substitute swear words with the actual word "cuss."  I know that this'll be one of the first movies I'll show my kid, but that's only because I want him to start out with a good taste of movies.  "Fantastic Mr. Fox" is one cuss of a good film, and a landmark in animation.


Rating: 4/4 stars