"Can you dig it?!?!"In the early moments of Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox, the propulsive opening strains of the second-tier Beach Boys hit "Heroes and Villains" accompany a 30-second scene filled with the kind of hilarious inventiveness that demands repeat viewing, and Mr. Fox is the kind of movie that will be watched over and over again in the living rooms of its fans. Even as the reality of immersive 3D visuals comes to our neighborhood multiplexes and LCD TVs, this film will stand as a testament to old-fashioned film-making for decades to come.
The movie is a valentine to the kind of stop-motion animation which for all our nostalgia, does not hold up very well today. Sorry, Rudolph. In the past 20 years, Henry Selick's The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach and Coraline, and Nick Park's Wallace and Gromit series and Chicken Run have elevated the art to heights that Arthur Rankin and Jules Bass must have thought impossible. While not evident at first, Anderson's Mr. Fox is a different animal than Selick's spindly creations and Park's trademark putty skin and google eyes. More than his predecessors, Anderson embraces the low-tech roots of stop motion animation by not trying to wow us with a polished technical achievement as much as entertain us with a quirky and wildly hilarious story.
The movie has the look of being made in a mad genius' basement under yellowing light fixtures, and I mean that in the most flattering way. Each animal has fur that ripples with every passing frame and every character is outfitted with a unique ensemble of real clothing. This serves to remind viewers that a human hand is at work here and suspends the suspension of disbelief. While this would ordinarily have an undesirable effect, Mr. Fox achieves something in spite of this in that the characters have the look and feel of inanimate dolls that have come to life to have adventures in a perpetually autumnal landscape. There is a non-sterile, imperfect and altogether magical quality to the look of this film that evades a perfect description, and perhaps that is praise enough on that account.
As is the case with most "animated" films made in the last twenty years, the cast is a roster of well-known Hollywood names, not voice actors. Anderson regulars such as Bill Murray, Owen Wilson and Jason Schwarztman are on-hand here, and each of their deadpan deliveries which have frankly grown a bit tiresome in Anderson's live action films are given new life when uttered by badgers, foxes and other field animals. The mercurial Meryl Streep does admirable work as Mrs. Fox, in what must have been a huge "get" for Anderson, but George Clooney's voice work as Mr. Fox steals the show. Clooney's effortless cool transfers well to the titular character, and Clooney's willingness to make off-the-wall choices throughout his movie career continues to serve him well. I have often referred to Clooney as a modern Cary Grant, but I doubt that Grant would have ever lent his voice to a talking animal.
When people talk of films (as people often do), Fantastic Mr. Fox may not be referred to as a masterpiece, but it may well be viewed in career retrospectives as Anderson's finest film. The acquired taste and mopey deadpan humor of Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, and The Life Aquatic has not so much been replaced by a new aesthetic as it has found a new medium, and haven't we been told for years that the medium is the message?
