The Fantastic Mr. Fox

How the Hell did I miss this movie??  If ever there was a film that was specifically designed with Blue Highwind in mind as its audience, it was "The Fantastic Mr. Fox".  And yet, not only did I not see it in theatres (lack of money being the core issue there), I spent an entire long empty year of my life living like a fool and not watching "Mr. Fox".  I mean yeah, I did have some thirty-eight other movies to watch in the meantime - not counting the ones that weren't worth a review, but that's no excuse!  I am less of a person for not having seen "Mr. Fox" earlier.  It is disgraceful!  No excuse allowed!

So usually I don't review movies that are over a year old unless I think they're amazing unknown gems that you guys wouldn't be exposed to anyway.  I could spend an afternoon savaging "The Box" or "2012", but I won't.  I'm too zen for endless pools of negativity now, countless take-thats to "The [Godawful] Expandables" notwithstanding (I promise that will be the final take-that).  But "The Fantastic Mr. Fox" is a special case.  For one, its all as fantastic as its title implies.  For two, its a silly animated film starring George Clooney with its own original sense of bizarre style and a damn good script.  This is so my kind of picture I'm starting to wonder if I'm actually Director Wes Anderson playing the part of a college-age film/politics blogger.  Its eerie.  Notice that you never see me and Wes Anderson in the same room?  Or Sarah Palin for that matter?  Well, out of respect for my possible other personality, I must review this film!

"The Fantastic Mr. Fox" is not a kids' movie.  Back in February when I reviewed "Where The Wild Things Are", I was a bit more on the fence on that issue, but here I'm 100% certain.  Mr. Fox might be a funny talking fox living in a world full of talking mammals who are all curiously only about a foot tall, but that's where the cartoon ends.  The animals live normal lives, buying houses in trees, meeting with lawyers, writing columns in newspapers that nobody reads, and worrying girls and finances and mid-life crises.  Its not that this film ever gets quite as dark as "Where The Wild Things Are", but nothing about its craft is made for children - the dialog is all like a normal movie, its themes are about as serious as it gets, and there's a LOT of a cussing*.

Since we live in an age where no film is ever an original concept**, "The Fantastic Mr. Fox" is based on a story by Ronald Dahl, writer of such beloved books as "Charlies and the Chocolate Factory"  and "The Witches".  I never read the original, so have no idea how faithful this movie is.  I'm doubting it follows that book very much at all.  You can see Mr. Fox reading the book on the DVD cover, in a nice throw-back.

Since this is a cartoon, I am duty-bound to discuss its art style.  Like many great cartoon films of the past, this is stop-motion puppets.  The animals walk around in full suits and dresses, never really acting like animals until they eat, which is a savage affair.  Some people have noted that the puppets look sort of like stuffed animal corpses like you'd see in your crazy Grandpa's back room.  I'm not quite so sure that's accurate, the puppets look expressive and lively, though clearly fake like a cartoon should properly be.  Oddly enough the animals have American accents while the humans have English ones.  The humans and animals do interact and can talk to each other (one rat is even hired by some farmers), but the humans still treat them like animals, seeing no real scruple in killing them all.  Many shots are flat, say with the animals digging underground holes like they're Bugs Bunny or something.  It seems to be a combination of stop-motion and regular 2D animation to make these effects.

The plot basically this:  what would happen to Danny Ocean if he were to settle down and raise a family?  Also, Ocean is a fox named "Mr. Fox"***.  Mr. Fox and his darling Felicia are both master chicken thieves until one day Felicia gets word from the doctor:  she's pregnant.  So Mr. Fox has to give up his daring exciting life in order to become a poor newspaper columnist that nobody reads.  Also Fox begins to suspect that his now-teenage son, Ash, is (swirly hand motion) different.  Read:  gay.  Ash (Jason Schwartzman being a douche as usual) isn't actually homosexual, but he is different, he dresses odd, he wants to be as good of a sports player as his Dad but fails, and isn't very good with the girls.  Then Mr. Fox's nephew Kristofferson, a fox-boy so pretty he might be an anime protagonist and a kung-fu master, comes to live with them, only making Ash's problems worse since he just can't compete with that level of pretty.  So anyway, Mr. Fox decides to go with one last great score, so he steals from the three scariest farmers in the history of the universe.  All this is to prove that he is the "quote-on-quote 'Fantastic Mr. Fox'". This causes the farmers to start a pogrom against all the animals, forcing Mr. Fox to save the day.

Beyond the bare basics of the plot, which still could have been light enough to be a kids' movie, this movie is strange.  The dialog is all so natural, its like watching a regular movie just with puppets.  The whole family structure is coming apart thanks to the ego of the patriarch, Mr. Fox.  Even his wife admits that she shouldn't have married this guy.  His son hates him and wants to be him.  And meanwhile they're fighting an evil rat who snaps his fingers every thirty seconds and is a monster with a knife.  One scene Ash is being brutally cruel to his cousin, and the next scene its a total wacky cartoon.  There isn't any sex scene or over-the-top bloody violence, but even so, the kids will not like it.  The character motivations are too complex, the morality too grey, the world too much like our own even with the stop-motion animation.  What kid wants to see a family just as dysfunctional as the one they live in?  You could have taken large parts of the script, removed all the puppetry, and just named this "The Royal Tenenbaums 2".

Some scenes don't make sense in either context:  towards the end there is a scene which I think is up there as one of the most bizarre moments in all of film.  Mr. Fox and his gang are driving along in a tiny motorcycle with a tiny sidecar and then stop in the road when they see a wolf.  Not a cartoon wolf, a normal wolf.  And for some reason the wolf is standing in Alaska while everybody else is in England in the autumn.  The wolf doesn't respond to any of the characters' questions, doesn't attack, and doesn't do anything.  Its just a long series of awkward pauses.  Mr. Fox gives the "Black Power" gesture and the wolf throws it back and everybody goes home.  WHAT WAS THE POINT OF THAT??  Yeah, all movie Mr. Fox claims that he has a phobia of wolves, but still.  This is just weird.  I was laughing my head off, because how else do you react to something like this?

The movie has a pretty decent soundtrack.  Nice collection of Beach Boys hits with some old-timey songs like the "Davie Crockett" theme and a couple of original tunes.  Nothing fantastic though.

"The Fantastic Mr. Fox" is one of those movies that you'll never see another of.  Movies that have such a unique style to them never get imitated and never are successes at the box office.  You watch them, you have a couple of laughs, but by the end you're always more than a bit confused.  Wes Anderson is probably the second or third most insane director in Hollywood today.  This is the first movie by him that I've actually liked and no surprise, its the one that's a cartoon.  Definitely worth a view, but not for kids.

Don't worry children, if you want to see little tiny talking furry animals have adventures while the humans aren't looking without the overbearing strain of a family coming apart, there's always this:  ITS HAMTARO TIME!!!

-----------------------------------------------
* The movie self-censors every single curse by replacing it with the word "cuss".  Ex:  "Are you out of your cussing mind?".  If the curses were kept in, this movie would have a fouler mouth than your average Scorsese film.  I suppose this fits in with this movie's general goal, which as best I can figure out is to make a very serious family-breaking down drama film in the setting of a silly stop-motion cartoon.

** On the other hand, its recently occurred to me that movies never were original.  "Casablanca" - based on a short story, "The Wizard of Oz" - based on a book, "All Quiet on the Western Front" - book, "Gone With the Wind" - book, "Frankenstein" - book, "Dracula" - book, "The Battleship Potemkin" - history, "Citizen Kane" - parody of the life of William Randolph Hearst, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" - folktale, "It's a Wonderful Life" - short story, "Dr. Strangelove" - book, "The Godfather" - book, "King Kong" - short story, "Lawrence of Arabia" - history, "The Graduate" - book, "On the Waterfront" - based on a series of muckraking newspaper articles, etc. etc. etc. etc.  At least "Star Wars" was a completely original IP.

*** I wonder what all the other foxes think about Mr. Fox's name.  You don't see any humans walking around calling themselves "Mr. Person".  Wouldn't you be offended if somebody just used your species name?  Its like they're declaring themselves to be the one and only fox, or at least the most important.  On the other hand, that does fit Mr. Fox quite a bit....