FANTASTIC MR. FOX

Rating: 5

For years, Wes Anderson has created separate cinematic universes, different but oddly familiar, in which to tell his offbeat tales of family dynamics. In FANTASTIC MR. FOX, he has taken the next logical step and created an actual alternate reality. Using stop-motion animation, and a tale of excesses unbound by Roald Dahl, he has concocted a film that uses a deceptively childlike idiom and woodland creatures to explore human nature in a profoundly piquant fashion.
The eponymous Mr. Fox, a natty dressser voiced in deep and dulcet tones by George Clooney, is a crack chicken thief, which is true to his wild animal nature, but not in keeping with the stable and safe home life envisioned by Mrs. Fox, voiced in equally dulcet, though more tenor-ish tones by Meryl Streep. A near death experience during a squab raid, and pending reproduction, elicits a promise from Mr. Fox to Mrs. Fox that he will give up his thieving ways. The which he does, though seven years later, that’s 12 fox years as the film reminds us, finds him a newspaperman with a yen to move from his underground den to a treetop in order to feel less poor. Neither Mrs. Fox’s reminder that there is a reason behind the fox’s instinct to live underground, nor the prevalent unfavorable mortgage interest rates nor a warning from his broker about the dangerous neighbors deter Mr. Fox. And more’s the shame. Those neighbors are Boggis, Bunce, and Bean, the three richest farmers in the valley and the meanest people on the planet. Alas, the proximity of all that booty, and an ad for bandit hats selling at a deep discount, lead him back to the wild animal nature he has been repressing. and into a life of pilfering.
Yet that is not the real story at work here, though the dissection of capitalist greed certainly is worth noting. The real story would be the needy petulance of son Ash (Jason Schwartzmann sounding appropriately juvenile), that ramps into overdrive when cousin Kristofferson (Eric Chase Anderson) comes for an extended visit. Exacerbating Ash’s already unsatisfying relationship to his father, the former looking askance at Ash’s penchant for wearing a cape, the latter desperate to be the athlete his father once was, Kristofferson is tall, graceful, a natural athlete, a precocious student, and the definition of a gentleman. All but the latter finds favor in Mr. Fox’s eyes as he unwittingly further alienates his already unwittingly alienated offspring.
The real story would also be the tension that arises when Mrs. Fox discovers that Mr. Fox has broken his promise. That the discovery comes on the heels of being hunted down by the three farmers out for revenge, does nothing to mitigate Mrs. Fox’s disappointment.
The animation, far from attempting to overcome the inherent drawbacks of the stop-motion medium, embraces them. What might otherwise be flaws in the masterful hands of animation director Mark Gustafson become virtues, reinforcing the artificiality of the premise and the wry tone of the script where the word “cuss” is substituted for any and all cuss words, and animal fur skitters with wild abandon for no other reason than the handling of the animators while posing the models. The emotional tug of Anderson’s adaptation of the story is anything but artificial. The complex emotions of the Fox family and their circle play out with wondrous subtlety on faces that are all animal, but through animation become human, if not human-like. Mr. Fox’s dazzling and toothy smile when caught in a lie, or caught in a moment of pure bliss, is the perfect mix of animal and human while never for a moment being either one.
As for the humans of the piece, Boggis, Bunce, and Bean, they are far more two-dimensional in their single-minded determination to destroy Mr. Fox for having helped himself to their wares, though Michael Gambon’s voice work at Bean contains within it the very human echoes of Rupert Murdoch. There voice work throughout is remarkable. Particularly that done by Clooney and Streep, who both pack so much feeling into it that they are easily classified as fully realized performances, his brimming with the charisma of audacity, hers of the lovingly sensible helpmeet who is without doubt the more mature of the two.
FANTASTIC MR FOX dazzles with possums obsessed with wolves, beagles with blueberries, and an evil rat with the sensibility of 50s teen exploitation flicks and just a dash of WEST SIDE STORY. Anderson, unfettered by the restraints of the physics of reality has created a world of charm, whimsy, and arch social commentary that inspires wonder, fear, empathy and laughter. Sometimes all at once. It’s artistic achievement sublime and stupendous on every level.