Film review: Fantastic Mr Fox

Published on Sunday 18 October 2009 12:19

FANTASTIC MR FOX (PG) * * * Director: Wes Anderson Running time: 87 minutes

'BOGGIS and Bunce and Bean/ One fat, one short, one lean. / These horrible crooks / So different in looks / Were none the less equally mean." Not quite Shakespeare but vintage Roald Dahl, the cleverest of contemporary children's writers (Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory, James And The Giant Peach) and author of the witty, anthropomorphic adventure Fantastic Mr Fox, which has been transformed into an animated curiosity by Wes Anderson. Ever since he asked stop-motion specialist Henry Selick to create sea creatures for 2004's The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, Anderson has been in love with this painstaking process of animation. He's also a long-term fan of Dahl.

Originally, the book told the story of a family of thieving foxes and their woodland animal associates who, after helping themselves to the local farmers' geese, chickens and cider, are chased by the three farmers. Now Anderson has updated the story so that although the humans remain bumpkin Brits, all the woodland animals have American accents and discuss cussing, the foxes cruise a supermarket, and Mr Fox (voiced by George Clooney in Ocean's Eleven mode) is advised on the property values of his new home by the badger lawyer (Bill Murray).

The head of the house is still Mr Fox, he still believes he is fantastic and he is still married to the loyal yet sceptical Mrs Fox (Meryl Streep). And he still loses his tail to hubris and rifle-wielding farmers, but what follows is like watching Ingmar Bergman's Cinderella or Mike Leigh's Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory, because Anderson imposes much of his own signature fretfulness into Dahl's foxy tale. The overconfident vulpine confides to his best friend that sometimes he wonders "Who am I, Kylie? Why a fox? Why not a horse, or a beetle, or a bald eagle? I'm saying this more as, like, existentialist, you know?" Adults may chuckle knowingly, but kids may find their jumbo Coke more engaging.

Mild vapidity, mildly mocked, is an Anderson staple – as is family dysfunction. Dahl gave Mr Fox four cubs, but Anderson boils them down to one truculent adolescent called Ash (Anderson regular Jason Schwartzman) so that he can reprise another of his pet themes: sons wounded by their fathers' absence, either literally or through neglect. Anderson's animators are marvellous at telegraphing simmering resentment out of a foxcub wearing nothing but underpants with his shoulders hunched against the world.

There are many nice animation touches in this film; the deliberately lo-fi stop-motion technique means the animals move jerkily like a 1970 kids show, and when distracted, their eyes turn into bamboozled spirals. Mr Fox may dress like Ralph Lauren at The Gap and sound like the urbane Clooney, but when he eats his breakfast, he rips it to shreds like any wild animal.

Dahl intended Fantastic Mr Fox to be read as a satire of human greed and brutality, but Anderson is more interested in toying with the notion of being true to one's nature. Mr Fox is supposed to have given up stealing for a pipe-and-slippers job writing a newspaper column that nobody reads, but he's unable to change his ways and set aside years of chicken snatching and centuries of genetic programming.

But ultimately Anderson overworks details at the expense of fashioning a fluent, child-inclusive experience. Or perhaps, in attempting to remould Fantastic Mr Fox, as Dahl wrote of farmers Boggis, Bunce and Bean, "Mr Fox was too clever for them."

Cinemas nationwide from Friday

This article was first published in Scotland on Sunday on 18 October 2009