Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)

Director:

Wes Anderson

Writers:

Roald Dahl (novel) and
Wes Anderson (screenplay)

Release Date:

25 November 2009 (USA)

Genre:

Animation | Adventure | Comedy | Family

Tagline:

Dig the life fantastic.

Plot:

Angry farmers, tired of sharing their chickens with a sly fox, look to get rid of their opponent and his family.

Plot Keywords:

Fox | Farmer | Cider | Tale | Anthropomorphic

Awards:

Nominated for Golden Globe. Another 5 wins & 8 nominations

US Showtimes:

Culver Plaza Theatres

12:00pm | 7:05

(personalize)

Cast

George Clooney	...	Mr. Fox (voice)
Meryl Streep	...	Mrs. Fox (voice)
Jason Schwartzman	...	Ash (voice)
Bill Murray	...	Badger (voice)
Wallace Wolodarsky	...	Kylie (voice) (as Wally Wolodarsky)
Eric Chase Anderson	...	Kristofferson (voice) (as Eric Anderson)
Michael Gambon	...	Franklin Bean (voice)
Willem Dafoe	...	Rat (voice)
Owen Wilson	...	Coach Skip (voice)
Jarvis Cocker	...	Petey (voice)
Wes Anderson	...	Weasel (voice)
Karen Duffy	...	Linda Otter (voice)
Robin Hurlstone	...	Walter Boggis (voice)
Hugo Guinness	...	Nathan Bunce (voice)
Helen McCrory	...	Mrs. Bean (voice)

MPAA:

Rated PG for action, smoking and slang humor.

Runtime:

87 min

Country:

USA | UK

Language:

English | French

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

DTS | SDDS

Certification:

USA:PG (certificate #45468) | Ireland:PG | Australia:PG | UK:PG | South Korea:All | Singapore:PG | New Zealand:PG | Canada:G (British Columbia/Manitoba/Quebec) | Canada:PG (Alberta/Ontario) | South Africa:PG | Philippines:G (MTRCB)

Company:

Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation

Trivia:

According to Henry Selick, Wes Anderson would act out scenes while in Paris and send them to the animators via his iPhone.

Goofs:

Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Mr. Fox says he can't say opossum in Latin because the ancient Romans had no word for it. The ancient Romans are irrelevant, as Latin has lived on as a scientific language ever since the general public stopped speaking it. Swedish Carolus Linnaeus (who Latinised his own name from Carl Von Linne') developed the Latin animal double-names in the mid-1700s, and thousands of new names have been added to that list regularly for at least 230 years. The name for opossum in this system is Didelphis virginiana.

Quotes:

[Kristofferson comes to Ash's defense after seeing Beaver's son forcing him to eat mud]
Kristofferson: Don't do that.
Beaver's Son: [Looking at Kristofferson's feet] Why'd you take your shoes off?
Kristofferson: So I don't break your nose when I kick it.

Movie Connections:

References Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier (1955)

Soundtrack:

Let Her Dance

Spirit if not letter of Dahl in animated adaptation romp

It's been about a quarter of a century since (enthralled) I read Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr Fox. Well this film roughly represents the text. However, Anderson and Baumbach took the decision to re-appropriate some of the story's content and style in order to reflect their own sense of energy and wonder. It basically works, because it's fresh, up-to-date and pertinent to a cinema audience.

The voices are a super feature, particularly that of Anderson's long- time collaborator Jason Schwartzman, who plays Ash, the eponymous Fox's son/cub. In a nice casting move, which brings further irony to a running joke concerning human vs fox years, Meryl Streep is Mrs Fox to Clooney's Mr... Clooney is a bit cool for me in this film - he's a good comic actor but a lot of what he does is visual. I missed a weight to his sincerity.

The spirit of the late, great British animator Oliver Postgate is invoked throughout the film with a generally low-fi approach to the animation. I was most impressed with the variation of shots, given that it's all roughly two-dimensional. Variations of angle and framing as well as some fluent camera tricks (which, sometimes for only a matter of frames, must have hardly seemed worth it) make for an involving film. The chase scenes are funny, fast and occasionally frightening. One mustn't forget that Dahl himself did not eschew the shocking in his books.

As is often the case with animation, there's a fair bit besides the narrative packed into the screen. We're treated to a Jarvis Cocker cameo in more ways than one; a Tarantino homage from Kill Bill; and an interesting framing device that Brian de Palma used in Carrie, overlaying a shot so that foreground and background are in focus simultaneously to take in solipsitic aside and reaction simultaneously. As in Carrie, this happens on a sports field, at a sub-Quidditch/cricket game, mixing quirks and pathos as the young animals wrestle with their own pre-pubescent purpose, Anderson's chief interest in this film.

Some of it doesn't work. I thought the second appearance of the (more Tarantino meets Desplat's Morricone-spoof music) rat was overlong and possibly superfluous. Yet I laughed a great deal and the serious moments never curdle. 7/10