Boring

Rating: 3/10 (24 July 2013)

I started watching this movie with the best intentions. I actually like many of the voice actors, and have heard good things about the director. Talk about life setting me up for a fall. It started with what I thought to be an opening sequence with some weird drawing-like images of a farm and some ugly lifeless foxes pasted on top of it, moving along with all the fluency of a powerpoint presentation. Soon enough I would find out that the entire movie would be in this style.
If I were to sum the entire experience up in a word it would be boring. That pretty much says it all. The animation (though probably brilliantly done, and very artsy) just doesn't deliver. The characters look lifeless and at times even scary. This is probably partially due to the facial expressions of the characters, or rather, lack thereof. They aren't nearly sophisticated enough to put the emotions of the story across. The ''action'' scenes are anything but. The slow, boring, and unrealistic stop motion animation makes it virtually impossible to feel any sort of suspense regardless of what's going on in the movie.
All of this could be forgiven if the story would be any good (and suited for this type of animation), but alas. The story is weird, long-winded, unengaging, but most of all; boring. I remember reading the book as a child, and loving it. I wish I could say the same for this screen adaptation. I don't really remember the entire story in the original book, but I'm sure it was more interesting than this.
The humor, or rather, lack thereof, is terrible. I don't remember even chuckling for the entire duration of this 87 minute nightmare. Those 87 minutes must have been in fox minutes, because it felt like an eternity. Usually these animated movies score quite well in the humor department, but this movie manages to elevate the ability to not-engage an audience to an art form. It's really quite impressive.
I don't even know what the purpose of this movie was. It failed to deliver on all fronts, and I can't imagine any of the people working on this genuinely feeling satisfied with the end result. At no point did I feel drawn into the movie. Honestly, I stopped watching after about an hour. I had to work really hard to even make it that far, but at a certain point I just gave up. I honestly don't care if the foxes made it out alive, or whatever happened to any of the characters. They could all be electrocuted and left to die for all I care. Steer clear.