Not so fantastic....

Rating: 3/10 (26 July 2010)

So far, Roald Dahl's stories have made a successful transfer to the big screen. This film could be said to have horribly ruined that positive trend. James and the Giant Peach, another Roald Dahl story, was brought to life through the use of stop-motion animation as well back in 1996. Similar to the way that Microsoft took a step backwards by upgrading everyone to the inferior Windows Vista, director Wes Anderson lets this film take a plunge by getting a high-definition camera and taking half the pictures that a fluent stop-motion film would require. This results in staccato movements that distract the audience and sap all the potential magic that could have been in the film. Indeed a lot of mistakes are made in the film. Whatever cleverness that Dahl may have originally written into his story is ruined by the director's idea of an alternate ending and overall an apparent carelessness to the way the film was constructed. I'm not saying the film is complete garbage, some parts do stand out, hinting at how good the original story may have been. But somehow even the clever parts, like the characters saying "cuss" when they intend to swear, becomes distracting and even unfriendly towards younger audiences when you realize that the swear it's replacing is the "f-word", just shy of them saying "mothercusser". Probably the worst stop-motion film I've ever seen, The Fantastic Mr. Fox is in no way fantastic and should be left alone.