Fantastic Mr. Fox

                

Roald Dahl’s slender 1970 fable, Fantastic Mr. Fox, is the story of a clever, poultry-stealing but good-hearted canine that outwits The Man (three men, really) with a lot of charm and a bit of good luck. As with the cinematic adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are, it was hard to imagine how such a simple tale could hold up as a full-length feature. The solution for director-cowriter Wes Anderson—just as it was for Wild Things director-cowriter Spike Jonze—was to add a whole bunch of family drama seen through the prism of an extremely idiosyncratic auteur.

From the opening plinks of “The Ballad of Davy Crockett,” which begin the movie, it’s clear that Fox is, above all else, a Wes Anderson Film. While children should be charmed by the gorgeous, detailed tableaus, retro stop-motion animation and healthy doses of goofy slapstick, parents will recognize the handprint of the helmsman behind Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums et al.: a groovy soundtrack, quirky actors (Anderson regulars Schwartzman, Owen Wilson and Bill Murray all contribute their voices), a cool, somewhat remote matriarch (Streep) and a dangerously visionary father (Clooney, having a ball). In order to fill almost 90 minutes of screen time, Anderson and cowriter Noah Baumbach invented new plot threads, such as the rivalry between Fox’s hapless cub, Ash, and his athletic, mantra-chanting yogi of a cousin, Kristofferson. Yet the movie preserves the subversive heart of its source material. Just as audiences sided with Dahl's manic-depressive Willy Wonka, you'll root for the raffish, reckless, thieving Mr. Fox over the law-on-their-side farmers. Although the script’s a bit talky at times, there’s enough madcap action to keep all but the most restless elementary-schoolers entertained. Many of the jokes—about the perils of buying real estate, for example—will amuse grown-ups but zoom straight over kiddies’ heads. There’s also a bit of cartoon violence, including at least one death that's original to the film; but Dahl was never one for shielding children from the darker side of life, either.—Carolyn Juris

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