Wes Anderson's Gleeful Stop-Motion Animation is No 'Fox Paw'!

Rating: 9/10 (31 January 2016)

Wes Anderson's cool quirks and characteristics follow him into the land of stop-motion animation with Fantastic Mr. Fox, an eye-popping, hilarious adaptation of the Roald Dahl children's book.
It's the timeless tale of Mr. Fox (George Clooney), who has enjoyed a life of doing what foxes do best: prowling for fowl. A prologue finds the dashing rapscallion and his wife Felicity (Meryl Streep) raiding a poultry farm. After they get ensnared by a trap, Felicity announces that she's pregnant, and our plucky fox finds himself trapped in a different sort of cage: parental responsibility. Mr. Fox, after promising his wife he wouldn't thieve anymore, settles into a humdrum life as a newspaper columnist. But he can't suppress his natural friskiness for long.
In an attempt to reclaim some thrills and escape the daily doldrums, he plans "one last heist" (we've heard that before). The mark: a dastardly trio of farmers - Boggis, Bunce and Bean, whose delectable deposits of chickens, ducks and cider are too delicious to deny. After Mr. Fox makes a mockery of their security by plotting daring - and quite humorous - night raids of their farms, the trio combines forces and goes on the offensive to kill their furry nemesis. The critters burrow deep into the Earth and capture the attention of local media. As the farmers amp up their machinations to bring an end to their clever rival, the animal community is dragged into this war of wits and survival, as Mr. Fox tries to find a way to save his family and friends.
As the voice of Mr. Fox, Clooney gives a wry nod and sly wink of a performance, while Streep slips so easily into the vocal role as his stern but loving wife, you don't notice her presence. The entire cast, that also includes Jason Schwartzman and Bill Murray, seems to be having so much fun you cannot help but imagine them sipping martinis during the voice recordings. While the performances make Fantastic Mr. Fox enthralling and overwhelmingly heartwarming, it's the film's splendid, old-fashioned stop-motion visuals that will win hearts. Wes Anderson's team boundlessly, buoyantly fill each frame with fine flourishes. Each intricately orchestrated frame feels like a gloriously animated page of a picture book. Landscapes resemble carpet remnants and fire extinguishers plume what looks like cotton candy. The adorable animals and the gorgeous environment displayed in the film seem like the felt patches of a children's book that are intended to be caressed against your cheek and held close to your chest. It not only looks scruffily beautiful, but it's hilariously off-balance, warm-hearted, perfectly composed and detailed and casually but meaningfully acted. This last feat is again the result of Anderson's inscrutable perfectionism.
The film incorporates all the quiet, improvisational style, dry humor delivery as found in Anderson's cinema, but combined with the proletarian fluidity of the animation; the result for audiences is a gleeful trance-like holiday. Wes Anderson's stop-motion animation is perhaps the purest distillation yet of his nerveless twee cinema of quirk.