Sunday, November 29, 2009
A+E, In this Issue..., Movies, Reviews

‘Fantastic’ voyage

‘Mr. Fox’ rivals ‘Up’ for the year’s best animated feature

BY STEVE WARREN

The characters may be talking animal puppets, but director Wes Anderson (“The Royal Tenenbaums,” “The Darjeeling Limited”) has never made a movie more recognizably his own than “Fantastic Mr. Fox.” Likewise, though his voice may be coming out of a fox—an extremely dapper fox—George Clooney has never sounded more like George Clooney than he does as the title character.

When the Foxes get in trouble for squab-stealing while she’s pregnant with their first cub, Ash (Jason Schwartzman), Mrs. Fox (Meryl Streep) insists that her husband get into a less dangerous line of work. Two years later (or “12 fox years”), Mr. Fox has become a newspaper columnist (talk about endangered species!) and is tired of living in a hole. Even though they’re poor, he goes out and buys a tree for the family to live in. Around this time, Cousin Kristofferson (Eric Anderson, the filmmaker’s brother) comes for an extended visit, upsetting Ash with his natural superiority.

Old habits die hard, and soon Mr. Fox is planning “one last big job.” He can’t help sounding like Danny Ocean as he goes over the details with his assistant, Kylie the opossum (Wally Wolodarsky). It turns out to be a triple-header, hitting all three hated farmers: “Boggis and Bunce and Bean, one fat, one short, one lean,” as the kids sing.

Ocean’s—er, Fox’s Two (Three, after Kristofferson joins them) are initially successful, but they get greedy and wind up endangering all the local animals as the farmers declare all-out war. This is when most animated films run into trouble by allowing the action to take over, but “Fantastic Mr. Fox” keeps its wit about it, remaining creative and funny while not neglecting the family issues that need to be resolved.

Anderson voices Stan Weasel, the realtor, and employs other actors he’s worked with before: Bill Murray, Owen Wilson and Willem Dafoe, in addition to Schwartzman and Wolodarsky. Then there’s Jarvis Cocker, whose banjo-pickin’ folk song cues a great punch line.

Just as Anderson’s live-action films never quite seem real, “Fantastic Mr. Fox” doesn’t quite seem unreal. The stop-motion animation can be amazingly smooth and amusingly jerky, seemingly at the same time. If computer animation has you thinking you’ll never see hair again in an animated film, this movie has enough fur to be picketed by PETA.

“Fantastic Mr. Fox” is based on a book by Roald Dahl, but his macabre touch is nowhere in evidence, having been replaced by that of Anderson and his writing partner Noah Baumbach. It’s difficult to imagine anyone of any age not being able to enjoy this hilarious mash-up on some level. There’s a bit of “Chicken Run” in the farmers-versus-animals plot, everything from Burl Ives and the Beach Boys to Georges Delerue on the soundtrack, and even a quote from “Rebel without a Cause.”

This is easily Anderson’s best picture. And if you didn’t think “Up” could face any real competition for the year’s best animated feature, “Fantastic Mr. Fox” will have you rethinking that assumption. 3.5 STARS