Where's Dahl?

Rating: 1/10 (26 June 2012)

While unfamiliar with Dahl's book of the same title, I have read other works of his and I watched this film expecting to see some evidence of his wit. I found none.
The dialogue is very American in style and I found it quite painful. This wasn't helped by the plot which focused more on the relationships between the unfaithful (in terms of a promise not to steal chickens again) Mr Fox and his loving wife and the one between their small weedy adolescent son and his athletic yoga doing cousin who had come over to stay. The actual exploits of Mr Fox were reduced to a poor sub plot.
Usually, when I watch a film with "goodies" and "baddies", I find myself wanting one side to win. It may the "goodies" but on occasion, I can for example find the heroes so obnoxious or perhaps that the villains have such charm that I wish the bad guys would win. Either way, there is at least some from of desire for an outcome.
In this case, I simply did not care. The slightly dysfunctional Fox family were bland. Their enemies, the farmers, may have been unable to let go of their determination for revenge on Mr Fox but, rather than having any real villainous qualities, they were about as uninteresting as the Foxes.
All in all, I found the film rather pointless.