To my dismay, at this time of year when I need to be most productive, the sheer volume of movies released seems to directly correlate with how much work I need to get done.... productivity FAIL.
So, in another procrastination spectacular, I hauled-tail over to the St. Anthony Theater to check out Wes Anderson's new stop-motion film, The Fantastic Mr. Fox. The prognosis? Cussing fantastic.
I'm incredibly glad that Anderson jumped on the rights to Roald Dahl's classic novel before anyone else did, because I highly doubt it could have been handled with such ingenuity, humor, or even sheer random depth in a cinematic undertaking by another director. As per Anderson's usual head-cocking randomness, Fantastic Mr. Fox was filled with laugh-out-loud WTF moments ranging everywhere from plot-furthering revelations like "Blueberries? Beagles love blueberries." to unexpected black-power fists for wolves on the hillside.
For the film, Anderson rounded up a solid list of actors to voice his puppeteered animals and their human enemies, including Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzmann, George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Owen Wilson, and Michael Gambon. I will have to admit, it was a bit unsettling to hear Dumbledore's voice coming out of a crazed Hard Cider magnate, Mr. Bean, but Gambon breathed Dahl's quintessential English-Gothic villain to life despite his recent turns as Hogwarts Headmaster.
The story, about one Mr. Fox (Clooney) who decides to face his mid-life crisis (at the age of seven fox-years) by reverting to the chicken-stealing habits of his youth and ends up pulling his entire animal town into the melee, is very simple, but manages to be complex on screen. Mr. Fox doubts who he is, and despite being a husband and father, he wants the "glory" he once had (compounded by a not-so-subtle moment when he loses his tail). His adolescent son, Ash (Schwartzmann), is going through his own crisis of identity as well, and the Fox's talented houseguest, cousin Kristofferson, only compounds Ash's desperate (and hilarious) cry for reverence from somebody, anybody.
Where Anderson's other movies have left off, Fantastic Mr. Fox certainly picks up, but, I believe, with improvement. Unlike Anderson's previous films, Mr. Fox manages to keep pace or even pick up speed where many of his others lost their elements of absurdity to prolonged catharsis. Maybe this is because unlike Anderson's other films, Mr. Fox, no matter how entertaining to adults, can and should still be a kid's movie. There is adult humor, sure, but it is tacful and subtle, and Anderson even managed to turn adult emotion into kid-friendly fun by using the word "cussing" where streams of profanity could have been had it been rated higher. This tounge-in-cheek homage to "Yep, this sure could have been an adult comedy" keeps Anderson in his normal sphere while causing a little girl in front of me in the theater to blissfully laugh as hard as I did.
Example:
Badger: In summation, I think you just got to not do it, man. That's all.
Mr. Fox: I understand what you're saying, and your comments are valuable, but I'm gonna ignore your advice.
Badger: The cuss you are.
Mr. Fox: The cuss am I? Are you cussing with me?
Badger: No, you cussing with me?
Mr. Fox: Don't cussing point at me!
Badger: If you're gonna cuss, you're not gonna cuss with me, you little cuss!
Badger: You're not gonna cuss with me!
[Both start snarling at each other, and then settle down]
Mr. Fox: Just buy the tree.
Badger: Okay.
Surprisingly, my favorite aspect of the film was that it proved that audiences don't need computer-generated graphics, flashy visuals, 3-D, or enormous budgets to make a fantastic animated film. To say the least, it was a complete visual delight, and proved the artfulness and care it takes to produce puppeteered stop-motion animation did not go out of fashion with Wallace and Gromit. When you come right down to it, goofy expressions just look goofier on clay-based puppets than they do on a CG character... don't believe me? Go see how fantastic Mr. Fox is for your self, and try to cussing prove me wrong.
-K
