Foxed

Rating: 3/10 (29 October 2009)

First, the good news: there's some sweetly nuanced stuff here, well-crafted little details and homages, such as Mr Fox's study being a meticulous recreation in miniature of Mr Dahl's garden hut, and the urbane Mr Fox, like the director, being quite the snappy dresser. While Mrs Fox, voiced by Meryl Streep, is indeed most foxy. "You're as fine looking as a crème brulee" leers Farmer Bean's sole security detail, Rat (Willem Dafoe), a finger-popping, flickknife-wielding Dennis-Hopper-with-a-tail from some 1950s B-picture. "Am I being flirted with by a psychotic rat?" is the wry response.
Suspiciously wry, some might say. If we reveal this film also features a Buddhist-chanting, yoga-practicing fox cub called Kristofferson, the least welcome new addition to a Roald Dahl story - or a canine family since Scrappy Doo; a soundtrack which includes the Beach Boys and the Ballad of Davy Crockett; assorted critters who talk like American co-ed hipsters; laconic musings on existentialism; and lines like "You really are a kind of quote unquote fantastic fox", then alarm bells might just start taking your eardrums apart, piece by jagged piece.
Watching this, we're reminded of the game in which you pair entirely unsuitable directors with other people's films: think 'Eli Roth's The Full Monty', 'Sam Peckinpah's Bambi', or 'Neil LaBute's The Wicker Man.' (Can you imagine how embarrassing that might be for everyone if the latter were actually made? Ah.)
This is a Wes Anderson joint first and foremost, with Dahl - and indeed Britain and Britishness - running an extremely poor second. Naturally, only those nasty old farmers have British voices, c/o Michael Gambon and Brian Cox, while even that most English of icons, Jarvis Cocker, contributes a forgettable bluegrass-style number. Turning AA Milne's creations into baffled little rednecks was bad enough. But dear old Foxy?
In the big scheme of things, this shouldn't really matter - but somehow it does. It jars tremendously. The counter-argument runs that story always wins out; that story crosses genre and geographical boundaries. Which would be fine if Anderson had bothered to even slightly subjugate his singular style in its service. If Dahl is all about the story, Anderson's films are all about the attitude. Again, fine. But you'd hardly turn The Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore or The Darjeeling Limited into bedtime stories for your children. Not unless you were feeling particularly sadistic.
It's also a stretch to imagine today's kids responding positively to the deliberately retro stop-animation, an earthier European-style familiar to elder generations, but which might seem abrasive to those weaned on Dreamworks and Pixar. By tying thousands of helium balloons to it, the latter has also raised the bar for family films to vertiginous heights. It's hard to see how Anderson's film, with its bafflingly charmless leading fox, could garner as much goodwill as Up, except among those who still think it's incredibly big and clever to smugly subvert family fare with some tiresomely idiosyncratic shtick.
The best children's stories find magic in the trash. They seek to elevate the everyday. In their droll, archly detached way, Anderson and his co-writer Noah Baumbach seek to reduce. When all's said and done, Mr Fox acknowledges that he's just a "wild animal". Felicity Fox says that, although she loves him, "I shouldn't have married you". Bean's cider-craving Rat may have ultimately redeemed himself, but in the end "he's just another dead rat in a garbage pail behind a Chinese restaurant." Way to go, Wes and Noah. Hope that babysitting gig works out for you.
Honestly, this really isn't some kind of Transatlantic stand-off on our part. But how much longer are we expected to stand impotently by while Hollywood arrogantly Americanises our every British children's icon, from Winnie the Pooh to Peter Pan? Who's next - Paddington Bear? (Yes, we know he's technically South American, but you get the drift). Clearly, it's time to fight back, starting with an all-new adaptation of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Starring Ant and Dec.