Movie Review: Fantastic Mr. Fox · 8:32pm Dec 17th, 2018
I'll come out and say that I've never really been interested in the movies of Wes Anderson. Part of that may go to my dad, who has had a rather mixed reaction to several of his movies.
But at any rate, when I found out about Fantastic Mr. Fox, courtesy of my sister sending me a link to a scene from it, I was interested. I liked Roald Dahl's books when I was a kid, I liked stop-motion, so putting the two together seemed like it could be something interesting.
So I kept my eyes open, and one day I picked up a copy of Fantastic Mr. Fox from Best Buy on the cheap, and eventually got around to watching it.
And, I have to say...
It's by no means a perfect movie, but the beginning of the movie is goddamn superb. (I was in kind of a bad mood after sitting through the previews before the movie, which included this dumb-as-hell Steve Carell "comedy"... within seconds of the movie starting, I was smiling. And when the music started, I was bobbing my head and tapping my foot to the beat. XD)
We open on Mr. Fox (George Clooney) waiting for his wife Felicity (Meryl Streep) to return from the doctor. When she gets back, they take the scenic route home, which Fox - a veteran bird-stealer - uses as an excuse to turn into a raid on a squab farm.
This opening sequence is pretty delightful in my eyes, with the warm colors of the countryside, the distinct style of the characters' animation, and the catchy music (we open with Mr. Fox listening to "The Ballad of Davey Crockett" on his Walkman, and the raid itself uses The Beach Boys' "Heroes and Villains" to delightful effect as Mr. Fox and his wife traverse the farm)...
However, the two foxes get caught in a cage. Felicity informs her husband that she's pregnant, and begs him to find another line of work if they escape. Fox reluctantly agrees...
Two years later (human years, that is - seven and a half in fox years) Mr. Fox has made a quiet life for himself as a newspaper columnist. He, Felicity and their son Ash (Jason Schwartzman) live in a hole in the ground, but Mr. Fox isn't satisfied with his lot in life; longing for the thrill of the old days, he moves his family into a new home in the base of a tree... one that is close to facilities owned by three very wealthy and very mean farmers: Boggis the chicken farmer, Bunce the duck and goose farmer, and Bean the apple and turkey farmer.
At the same time, the Fox family take in one of their relatives: Ash's cousin Kristofferson (Eric Anderson), a situation that Ash finds intolerable, especially due to his soft-spoken cousin managing to outdo him in just about everything, even down to receiving praise from Mr. Fox.
With the help of opossum workman Kylie (Wallace Wolodarsky), Mr. Fox begins stealing from the three farms... which soon spirals into disaster as Boggis, Bunce and Bean do everything in their power to kill him...
It's this middle section of the movie that I have the most trouble with. And I'll tell you why: while I'm not familiar with many of Wes Anderson's films, I have heard plenty of comments about them being very dry and deadpan. And to my mind, that does hurt the impact of the middle stretch of Fantastic Mr. Fox.
Don't get me wrong, there are bits I enjoy in this sequence. In fact, the deadpan humor of the farmers' efforts to kill Mr. Fox is pretty funny, just because of the fact that they are so calm about going to such obscene lengths over one fox. From unloading a small army's worth of ammunition at him, to bulldozing his tree home, to dynamiting it... Boggis, Bunce and Bean set a good standard for "disproportionate retribution." (My favorite part of this sequence involves the gag of Bean calling up his right-hand man Petey to have him get whatever they need for their next attempt. Michael Gambon's delivery is pretty fun. XD)
That being said... the other side of this deadpan quality shows in the animals' homes being destroyed. To me, the peril of this situation never quite lands, due to... I don't know, the detached nature of the film's storytelling? Even while Mr. Fox and his family are tunneling for their lives and a lot of Mr. Fox's decisions come back to bite him hard, I never quite felt the full sense of emotional investment I felt I should be getting from this whole sequence. (Though that's not a knock at any of the actors. I loved Meryl Streep's performance all the way through, especially when she loses her temper with her husband. And George Clooney's performance when he sits down to talk with his son Ash later in the film is really wonderful as well, a great moment between father and son.)
However, the final act of the movie - in which Mr. Fox leads the displaced animals of the forest in a wild, all-or-nothing mission of rescue against the farmers - more than makes up for the above. Especially when Ash finally has his own moment of daring that pays off beautifully. I was close to applauding in the finale of the battle against the farmers.
So ultimately, while the middle portion of the film kind of sags for me, I still really enjoyed a LOT of Fantastic Mr. Fox. A lot of the voice actors are superb in their parts: Clooney delivers an excellent performance as the urbane, charming Mr. Fox who also has insecurities beneath his attitude of cleverness; Meryl Streep is also superb as the maternal Mrs. Fox, being able to be a caring mother and wife while still putting her paw down (XD) when her son or husband go too far.
Jason Schwartzman and Eric Anderson do a good job with their characters: Ash manages to be a good mix of cruel and sympathetic: he's deeply jealous of his cousin's numerous skills and says some pretty hurtful things, but at the same time it's obvious that he's also got some hangups with how everyone refers to him as "different" and wishes he were more of the son that his father seems to want... Ultimately, both boys manage to grow more and make peace with each other.
Two other performances I want to talk about include Bill Murray as the lawyer Badger, and Willem Defoe as the psychotic cider-drinking Rat. Murray has my personal favorite scene in the movie, when he tries to persuade Mr. Fox to not buy the tree near the farmers' properties. Murray's description of Boggis, Bunce and Bean is absolutely hilarious, and it only gets funnier when Badger and Fox get into an argument.
Defoe's Rat is a weird and delightfully psycho presence. A rail-thin, cider-loving fiend who towers over Mr. Fox and the other animal characters, Rat delivers his lines with a Southern-inflected drawl, that manages to be both humorous and oddly unsettling too. This spindly, switchblade-twirling maniac only gets two scenes in the entire movie, but they definitely hold your attention, and by the time Rat is through, you might even feel a bit sorry for him too.
All in all, I did enjoy Fantastic Mr. Fox. While it did kind of sag a bit for me in the middle act, it dug itself out of the hole it had gotten into (hah! XD) to deliver an entertaining conclusion. I loved the characters and their actors, and the design of the movie itself is quite unique and interesting, especially to someone with a fondness of stop-motion animation. There's something both realistic and cartoonish about the look of the film: from the caricature-like farmers (one fat, one short, one lean XD) to the animals that are both realistic and anthropomorphic... it's the kind of oddness that is perfectly fitted to the Roald Dahl book the story is based off of.
And, to those of you who know what I'm talking about here...
You made a damn good song, Petey.
I love this movie, heck I still do.
Murray's explanation of the farmers, I still remember every word he said of that!
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It is a movie with a lot to enjoy in it. Especially, yes, Bill Murray's exposition about the farmers.
To say nothing of the argument he and Mr. Fox have with each other.
I never thought I'd hear Bill Murray and George Clooney hissing and spitting like actual foxes and badgers in a movie, but I love it!
Fantastic Mr. Fox.
That movie was weird.
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It's based on a book by the same guy who created Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Witches, The BFG, George's Marvelous Medicine and a lot of other freaky children's books.
Weird is to be expected. XD