Movie 30: The Fantastic Mr. Fox

Mr Fox is a bird thief to trade, but when Mrs Fox tells him that she’s pregnant she insist that if they survive (his cockiness got them stuck in a trap) he has to get out of it and find a real job. Which he does, as a columnist. Sick of living in a hole because it makes him feel poor, he buys a tree house that has a view of the farms of Boggis, Bunce and Bean. True to his nature he can’t resist one last big three part score. But this pisses the farmers off and they go to war, putting the whole animal community in danger.

Nut shelled! I have read the original book but it was a looooooong time ago. I know I liked it, I know it’s the first book I ever read in an hour, but I can’t remember the plot all that well so don’t know how much is changed for the film. From the IMDB trivia I’m guessing a fair bit and they’ve added some characters.

This is a Wes Anderson movie. And you can’t spell Wes Anderson movie without weird. Honestly, check. I had to add movie to get the I though. So there is a fair few surreal moments here. It also feels a lot like an indie movie dialogue wise. In fact most of the characters talking, much like Where The Wild Things Are, is very grown up or at least early teens for the younger characters. So kids probably won’t know what people are talking about a lot of the time.

Unlike WTWTA this is a lot more fun though. There’s plenty of silly action in it, plenty of laughs.

I did have a bit of an issue with the animation and found out after the fact that it’s deliberately clunky to highlight the stop motion. This gave an amateurish feel to the movie but after a while its not AS annoying. They filmed it 12 frames per second instead of the 24 that gives realistic movement to the human eye/brain. Why they didn’t just knock it down to 20 or so to give a hint but keep some fluidity I don’t know. The effect does work quite well sometimes, but not for the whole movie.

It would be hard to make a bad movie based on a work of Roald Dahl, and they haven’t. Fantastic Mr Fox isn’t QUITE fantastic, though it has a great script and a hell of a cast, but it is damned good