Variety Style Review — Fantastic Mr. Fox

Fantastic Mr. Fox

A distinctly Wes Anderson take on the stop-motion genre, based on the incredibly remarkable story of the “Fantastic Mr. Fox.”

By F.W.C

It's not often that a director makes such a seamless jump from live-action to animation, and it's even rarer to do so in stop motion. However, this adaptation of Roald Dahl's 1970s children's book, “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” is so distinctly a Wes Anderson film that it's easy to think he has always been in the animation industry. This story about a fox clan is deeply devoted to the themes of family, personal growth, and community. Taking a very stylistic stance against the new CGI toons, and harking back to a time of stop motion when franchises like “Wallace and Gromit” stood strong.

Every aspect, from the storyboards to the film's chapter headings, exudes a distinctive Wes Anderson feel. This unique atmosphere seamlessly blends with a diverse range of music, creating a surprising yet harmonious soundtrack thematically summed up as 'Countryside Cowboys.' This compilation includes iconic tunes like "The Ballad of Davy Crockett" and "Beach Boys."

Presented as an eccentric and charming thief, Mr Fox (voiced by George Clooney) seamlessly combines the sophisticated style of a charming rogue with the animalistic instincts of a man seeking the best life for himself and his family. His wife, Trim (voiced by Meryl Streep), plays a crucial role in grounding the character. She not only provides motivation for his actions but also serves as a voice of reason, countering his more animalistic and greedy tendencies. Together, the pair forms a cohesive unit, offering an almost temperate response to the morality of fighting a losing battle against the world to protect one's own.

Unlike Dahl’s original work, which included pencil-sketch drawings of the characters, Anderson breaks away from the source material to offer a much more stylistic approach to the story. He places significant emphasis on the story's villains, Boggis, Bunce, and Bean—“one fat, one short, one lean”—to serve as proxies for the true villains of the narrative: the divide between man, nature, and consumerism. These three titans of industry will stop at nothing to destroy Mr. Fox and his way of life, and likewise, Mr. Fox goes out of his way to provoke these three into taking action. It poses an interesting dynamic of morally grey actions that are justified up and to a point, and which they become absurd.

Thematically, the movie's greatest strengths lie in its character-driven moments. Stand-alone sequences force both the characters and the audience to confront choices: the choice to survive and do what is necessary for our families or to draw a line in the dirt. Numerous instances of this nature spiral into much of the drama and action sequences within the film. Mr. Fox, his son, and the rest of the family unit consistently face challenges with no easy solutions, yet they all turn to Mr. Fox to make the tough calls.

Anderson's deliberate choices, including the unpolished, jerky camera style and silent embellished moments in scenes, are a nod to the early days of cinema and stop motion. Drawing inspiration from classics like "King Kong," he seamlessly incorporates the stop-motion format into the film's style. While some may find it slightly jerky or constrained in its frame rate, Anderson embraces these qualities as a deliberate contrast to modern CGI.

There have been reports that Anderson was not available on-site during the actual shooting in London, with much of his direction stemming remotely from his time in Paris. But regardless of its practical impact on the shoot, there is no denying that the final product is everything we want from a Wes Anderson classic. Every detail is sheer perfection.