Fantastic Mr. Fox (A-)
(Rated G): In the short children's novel by British writer Raold Dahl ("Willy Wonka, etc.), Mr. Fox is the protagonist - a dapper, pragmatic, foxy fox who engages in constant (and eventually successful) combat with three corporate farmers that are intent on ridding the area of him, his family and friends.
The mostly stop-action animated film retains closely the original story's mid-section, but stretches with Wes Anderson's personal touch the beginning & end - to its present 87-minute length with situations from writer/director Anderson (with Henry Selick) that held faithfully to the tone of the original. It was a labor of love.
Anderson, whose credits include the quixotic "The Life Aquatic," labored for nearly three years over the making of this film, blending the heart of the original with his singularly quirky style. To get a desired effect that would retain Dahl's intent, he even recorded the voices of the characters, not on a stage set, but out in the open. "We went out in the forest, went in an attic, went in a stable. We went underground for some things. There was a great spontaneity in the recordings because of that." And as for production design: "We wanted to use real trees and real sand, but it's all miniature."
Meticulous to a fault, Anderson's miniature sets have been built so realistically that his cameras could move in for close-ups (for,say, the products on the shelves in a super market) and reveal them to be uncannily accurate down to the last detail. For the costumes, again, painstaking care went into the choosing of cloth textures, then creatively designing & carefully sewing them.
In fact, one could almost say Anderson & crew spent far more time on production planning than on the plot itself. The astounding results are worth it.
A talented cast headed by George Clooney as Mr. Fox, Meryl Streep as his wife, and including Jason Schwartzman (son Ash), Bill Murray (his lawyer Badger), and Eric Chase Anderson (his nephew Krish) are all equally up to par, working easily & successfully with one another with voices that match the cleverly designed characters.
Alexandra Desplote's use of camera & lighting, which bring another sense of realism, is most impressive.
Anderson's use of special effects, including an occasional jerkiness in movements, seems a bit amateurish at first, then settles into what I assume to be a conscious effort to remind us that this is, after all, a stop-action film. In all, it's a children's movie for adult appreciation - great fun. (Grade: A-)
