Screen Machine

Review: Fantastic Mr. Fox

Fantastic Mr. Fox marks two departures for Wes Anderson: It’s his first animated feature and also his first adaptation. Yet the film still  fits comfortably within Anderson’s filmography, exhibiting that peculiar quality of immaculate off-handedness that films such as Rushmore and The Life Aquatic share. Any fan of the original Roald Dahl book might be afraid that Anderson’s immediately recognisable aesthetic might overwhelm the spirit of the source material, but to the contrary, Fantastic Mr. Fox reveals Dahl and Anderson to be a match made in heaven. Anderson’s infamously meticulous mise-en-scène is a fairly perfect visual analogue for Dahl’s own prose, full of funny descriptive details. Take the way Wes Anderson introduces the film’s villains, farmers Boggis, Bunce and Bean. It feels like a retread of the character introductions from The Royal Tenenbaums until you remember that is taken straight from the book. Far from being worried about there being too much Wes Anderson in Fantastic Mr Fox, the film had me wondering how much Roald Dahl there is in Wes Anderson’s previous films.

The pleasures of Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox are many. The production design is inordinately cute and detailed. The voice-work is exceptional. (Even George Clooney is not as distracting in the lead role as I had feared. But one thing which may be overlooked by many is just how good the animation is. Old-fashioned as the stop-motion might be, the animation of Fantastic Mr. Fox has something missing from most American animations (even the pop materpieces of Pixar): That spark of the unpredictable that makes us human. What distinguishes the animation of Fantastic Mr. Fox is the thought that has gone into creating moments where animal characters make a “mistake” or stumble over words or do little human things like brush off their blazers. Pixar is very good at animating moments but in this film we see superbly animated non-moments.

Even more of a delight is how Anderson retains the devilish, anarchic sensibility of Dahl’s work. Crime, violence, cursing: It’s all here and no thought is spared on making these grisly elements more palatable for a modern audience. (Mr. Fox even speaks French!) Anderson and his co-writer Noah Baumbach have added layers to the original story of a fox who steals from farmers; namely, Mr. Fox has marital tension arising from a promise in the past to give up the dangerous career of thievery and a neglected son with no discernible talents or attractive qualities. Thankfully, the additions serve only to make the movie more shambolic rather than more conventional.

I almost feel sorry for the parent given the impossible task of explaining the moral of a story in which an animal steals food, gets away with it and spends the rest of his days mooching off the system. But I suspect the parents are having as much fun as the kids are.

Brad Nguyen is a co-editor of Screen Machine. He studied Cinema Studies at the University of Melbourne, was the film reviewer for Triple R Breakfasters and has written for Senses of Cinema.

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