Fantastic Mr Fox
George Clooney voices the lead role in Fantastic Mr Fox
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By Matthew Champion. |  |
Thursday, 15, Oct 2009 11:41
Showing at the London film festival on October 14th (19:00 and 19:30)
On general release November 25th.
By Matthew Champion.
The old arguments about American film versions of quintessentially British literary works being a disgrace mercifully do not apply to Fantastic Mr Fox, not because Wes Anderson has stayed especially faithful to the source material (he hasn't), not because he's flooded it with English talent (he didn't), but because he's done a good job.
The aesthetic eccentricities of the director are in every scene of his beautiful stop motion animation of Roald Dahl's (beloved) children's book, from the close ups of a bristling Mr and Mrs Fox in their wild animal days and the long drawn-out cross-section sequences to the awkwardly-cool dialogue and folky rock soundtrack, supplied from time to time by Jarvis Cocker in this case.
Anderson is no different from the rest of the English-speaking world in being a staunch Dahl fan. In his movie the novel first published in the 1970s forms the latter half of the story, Anderson going to great pains to flesh out the back story of Mr and Mrs Fox, voiced by George Clooney and Meryl Streep.
The happy couple were originally chicken thieves, running rings around the stinking rich farmers Boggis, Bunce and Bean ("One fat, one short, one lean").Their lives change forever when Mrs Fox announces she is pregnant; not wanting her husband to be risking his life with rabid beagles, shotguns and spring-loaded cages when she has a cub in the oven.
But a journalistic career change leaves Mr Fox wanting for more, first a move overground from the family hole to a glorious tree. It is from said tree, bought from a real estate weasel, that Mr Fox espies the not-so-distant farms of Boggis, Bunce and Bean, where the temptation proves too much and he once again dons the bandit mask of his past, risking his and his family's lives and - much more dangerously - breaking a promise to Mrs Fox.
Clooney's Mr Fox is a Vulpus vulpus struggling to contend with the disappointment he feels in his "different", stunted son Ash (Jason Schwartzman), compounded by the arrival of his star athlete nephew Kristofferson. Things take a further turn for the worse when, for his most daring mission yet, he gives his nephew his own bandit mask and brings him along for the ride, provoking Bean (Michael Gambon) and his fellow farmers into swearing the destruction of Mr Fox, whatever the cost.
Dahl fans will find themselves in familiar territory at this point, but in a madcap finish that fully utilises the voice talents of Bill Murray and Willem Defoe (Mr Badger and Rat respectively) Anderson gets his message across that you can take the fox out of the chicken coop, but hell still be a wild animal at heart (best illustrated in the stand-out scene with the one animal Mr Fox actually fears).
Anderson''s movie is the first of three Clooney films being shown at the London Film Festival this month. Up in the Air and Men Who Stare at Goats will struggle to match the arresting visual impact or flippant beauty of Fantastic Mr Fox.
It's not a comedy, it will rarely make you laugh, but it is an entertainment that will make you smile, almost non-stop.
It's zany, it's mad-cap, it's gorgeous to look at... it's fantastic.