"How can a fox ever be happy without -- you'll forgive the expression -- a chicken in its teeth?"
The stock complaint against Wes Anderson is that his movies are more about finicky dollhouse visuals than story. And yet when it looks as good as Fantastic Mr. Fox — shot, literally, in a dollhouse — it’s hard to see why that might be a problem. The visuals define the story. Fantastic Mr. Fox is a tour de force of expressive stop motion animation, characters and details fluttering and shimmering in every frame, but never shying away from the slightly-rigid geometry of the medium so that the audience never forgets how meticulous the construction of the film is.
Fantastic Mr. Fox is almost too beautiful. Rather, its beauty is laborious; you are never not noticing the attention to detail of its physical construction. I absolutely love looking at it, but I’m, like, always looking at it. The experience of consuming the movie as visual art surpasses consuming it as a filmed narrative. This probably sounds a little bit like a complaint, and to some degree, it is — I ultimately feel a slight bit of distance between myself and the movie in contrast to the way the director’s other movies deeply immerse me in spite of their beautiful looks. Like if there is one movie where the argument that “Anderson’s movies are too much about their cute visuals” might hold water, it would honestly be Fantastic Mr. Fox. But the lede should be that it’s really fucking beautiful bespoke stop-mo animation.
The story, inasmuch as it matters and isn’t just a showcase of strung together fun moments: After Mr. Fox (George Clooney) and his wife Felicity (Meryl Streep) get caught stealing squabs (i.e. game birds), she reveals that she’s pregnant, and makes him swear off farm thieving. He vows to become a respectable domestic dad. Twelve fox years (i.e. two solar years) later, Mr. Fox is feeling resentful of his domesticity and fatherhood. The family moves into a new house in a far off tree. But this new house offers a succulent temptation: three nearby farms with livestock ripe for the swiping, which lures Mr. Fox back into animal thieving that he now must hide from both the hunting humans and his family.
The story from here essentially plays out like a heist movie. I am not the first to observe that Clooney also starred in the most popular heist series in film history, the Ocean’s movies — maybe that’s why Anderson cast him. There are a deluge of fun set pieces and details in these actiony bits. (E.g., Willem Dafoe plays a guard rat — named Rat — who steals both scenes he appears in.)
Not for the first or last time in Anderson’s career, the film has a theme of reluctant parenthood. Mr. Fox’s misfit son Ash (Jacon Schwartzman) tries to win some of his aloof father’s affection. The tension is only heightened by the appearance of Ash’s charming and immediately-beloved cousin, Kristofferson (Eric Anderson).
I find the plot to be a bit manic and disjointed overall. There are unquestionably some great scenes, but I never shake the sense that it’s mostly there as something to hang this tremendous visual style upon. It works in fits and starts, which is all it needs to get across the finish line, but not enough to elevate it to Wes’s pantheon.
I should add that I have never read the source Roald Dahl book. But I have read other Dahl books, and I find Fantastic Mr. Fox (the film) does a pretty good job of capturing the author’s tenor: a touch dark but mostly whimsical.
Fantastic Mr. Fox is absolutely worth watching on the strength of its stop motion alone. The emphasis on oranges and reds make it feel so autumnal. Its tone is quite inviting and rich, and its many little quirks add up to a distinct personality. (I develop the bad habit of imitating the tongue click-whistle thing that Mr. Fox for a week every time I watch.) But it doesn’t quite have Anderson’s sublime blend of storytelling and mise en scene working at full 100% throttle. Almost, but not quite.
Is It Good?
Very Good (6/8)
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