Utterly charming and entertaining

Rating: 8/10 (3 December 2009)

Wes Anderson's adaptation of Roald Dahl's book is clever, audacious, and a lot of fun. Shot using stop animation, this one-of-a-kind movie has the elegance of both The Nightmare before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach with the quirkiness you'd expect from an Anderson film. George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, and Bill Murray lend distinctive voices to a witty, delicious script.
Mr. Fox (Clooney) is an unrepentant thief until he makes a promise to Mrs. Fox (Streep) that he'll quit for good (after he informs him that she's pregnant) if they escape a farmer's trap. They do, and he makes good on the promise, moving the family from their underground home to an isolated tree near three vicious, desperate super farmers. But it's not long before Mr. Fox is pining to pull off One More Job, which turns into several more jobs, with the help of Kylie the opossum.
However, the three farmers aren't your typical placid farmfolk, they're vengeful jerks, so after Mr. Fox makes off with much of their birds and cider, they vow revenge, which includes using a backhoe to remove not only the tree but also a huge chunk of the earth.
There's also an interesting subplot involving Mr. Fox's son Ash (Schwartzman), who feels that his parents think he's worthless and that he can't possibly compete with the super-debonair Mr. Fox. Ash is at that awkward age anyway, so dealing with his famed dad isn't easy. Then, on top of that, Ash's cousin Kristofferson (Eric Chase Anderson) arrives for an extended stay, and he's perfect in virtually everything. So poor Ash can't measure up to his dad OR his cousin.
What makes this movie really work, though, is the magnificent animation style. We've all seen those old Rankin-Fitch Christmas classics, right? This is sort of like that, only even more stylized and fluid. The film was shot at a rate of 12 frames per second, rather than the standard 24, so that viewers could really see the actual stop-motion animation process itself. And the result is that the movie feels more organic, more natural, and more poetic.
A Wes Anderson movie is usually oddly endearing anyway, but this one is exceptional in its uniquity. The set pieces are dazzling (for example, the hair on the humans is from actual human hair, from the movie's crew), and the backgrounds are meticulous works of art. Neat trivia: Mr. Fox's study is a faithful recreation of Roald Dahl's garden hut, where he wrote most of his beloved books.
It's fun seeing Clooney in a role he's best suited to anyway, the devilish rogue. (One gets the feeling sometimes that he'd really like to be James Bond.) Mr. Fox is certainly not without his flaws (need for spotlight, need to be right, delusions of grandeur), but his heart belongs to his family and to the other woodland creatures. The characters are nuanced just enough for kids to grasp their intentions and attitudes while not being too simplistic for adults to enjoy.