Not so Fantastic Mr. Fox

Fantastic Mr. Fox is the new film from quirky director Wes Anderson, whose previous films include Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and The Darjeeling Limited. Anderson's films are comedies that specialize in awkward, unsocialized characters who are trying to fit into the real world. This may explain why Anderson's muse is Bill Murray who has appeared in all of Anderson's movies in greater or lesser roles. In fact, I credit Wes Anderson with saving Bill Murray's career which has had a resurgence since he appeared in Rushmore, including an Oscar nomination for Lost in Translation. Like Woody Allen and the Coen Brothers, Wes Anderson's movies are hit or miss, but you want him to keep making movies.  Rushmore is a big favorite of mine, and as a fan of Jacques Cousteau as a kid, I really appreciated The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

In his new film, Wes Anderson has moved into animation; not just animation but stop-action animation. This is a little used technique these days outside of the classic Wallace and Gromit movies. The making of Fantastic Mr. Fox involved puppets and tiny sets, with each puppet painstakingly moved a tiny fraction and then filmed and so on over and over until you get a movie. One of the charms of Fantastic Mr. Fox is that the animation really doesn't look that good. This movie has a Wallace and Gromit feel to it. The makers of  Wallace and Gromit  concoct a complex plot about something very silly, usually involving cheese and sheep, and Wes Anderson has done something very similar involving foxes, chickens and cider. The film is based on a book by Roald Dahl. In the story, Fantastic Mr. Fox (George Clooney) decides to settle down and raise a family. He marries Mrs. Fox (Meryl Streep). But he can't quite settle down and he is always wanting to raid the chicken coops of the nearby nasty farmers, Boggis, Bunce and Bean. The Foxes have a son (Jason Schwartzman) who is a chip off the old block and before long he and another young fox (Wallace Wolodarsky) are planning raids of their own.

For a slight, silly film, Fantastic Mr. Fox has a fairly complex plot and a lot of characters. Besides the fox family, there are various other animals who are friends and associates of Mr. Fox, including Badger (Bill Murray). There are three evil bad guys plus their minions including a rat (Willem Dafoe). But it is all very light-hearted, especially Mr. Fox himself who blithely goes forward with his plans even as the roof is literally falling in. My favorite silly things in the movie are the whistle and clicks that Mr. Fox always gives as a greeting and the "bandit hats" that they wear as a badge of courage during their raids. I quite liked parts of Fantastic Mr. Fox but it didn't really hold my interest.  I took a few naps during the movie so I may have missed the best bits. My napping is not a good method of rating a movie since I slept through quite a bit of The Big Lebowski the first time I saw it. Anyway, I have to say that most people liked Fantastic Mr. Fox better than I did. So don't let me stop you.