Sly
Fantastic Mr. Fox / Trying to be hip is like trying to be a hobbit: Either you are or you aren’t. When he’s at the top of his game, as he is here, writer-director Wes Anderson (Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums) is a true hipster filmmaker, combining enormous technical skills with what appears to be genuine spontaneity. When he’s off his game (The Life Aquatic, The Darjeeling Limited), he strains for too much and delivers too little. Nonetheless he’s one of a handful of cult directors for the under-40 audience, which seems to like him whatever he does.
It’s clear, however, that Anderson is really a fabulist at heart: the fable is his genre. When he’s somewhat autobiographical, as in Rushmore, the fable works within the realist tradition; when he “borrows” liberally in Tenenbaums, the fable is grounded in Salingeresque whimsy. Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, which is the first book Anderson remembers, is a pure fable, and it’s this small book Anderson and his co-writer Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale) have expanded (and improved) their source. It’s a new classic, this movie.
It’s the most ambitious stop-motion movie ever made (l40 animators and a $40 million budget). Its voice cast includes George Clooney (hip and funny), Meryl Streep (pitch perfect), Bill Murray (inspired as a hilarious-looking badger) and Anderson-favorite Jason Schwartzman as the foxy Clooney-Streep son. The adventure’s plot (a family of displaced foxes declares war on three villainous human farmers) is fast-moving and funny, both visually and verbally. The background music (pop hits from the last 20 years) is wonderfully chosen, but we’ll give no spoiler-example.
Some writers have pointed out that Anderson/Baumbach have expanded the theme of marriage in their take on the book, pushing it beyond the definition of “children’s book.” When this reviewer saw the movie last weekend, both kids and parents were laughing it up–mightily. There’s something to laugh at every step of the way, as the scenographic content never fails to be witty and is nearly always dazzling.
This film, slugging it out with an onslaught of quality films for the holiday season, is clearly a labor of love. Its energy, the hardest quality to preserve in film production, never flags. The actors seem charged up: this is Clooney’s best work since Michael Clayton and Murray’s best since last month’s Zombieland. These guys (and Streep) are on a roll.
Fantastic Mr. Fox is a tale of survival that somehow resonates with “human” meaning, without ever becoming heavy-handed or preachy. This movie, as unlikely a project to be financed in a nervous Hollywood (but put together in England), is one of the three or four best of 2009. And in the eyes of this reviewer anyway, Anderson has made his best movie. It’s not to be missed.
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