A Wes Anderson film bearing little resemblance to Dahl's beloved book

Rating: 4/10 (25 October 2009)

I was so frustrated watching this film. I went in with Dahl's whimsical Mr Fox, adored by his family and beautifully and loquaciously winning over his friends and neighbours, making him truly 'Fantastic' Mr Fox. Very shortly into the film I wondered why Wes Anderson had bothered to 'adapt' Fantastic Mr Fox when every character was so far removed from Dahl's characters, with Mr Fox's pubescent son resembling Gwyneth Paltrow's Tenenbaum character. Clooney's Mr Fox is far from fantastic, Streep's Mrs Fox is nothing like Dahl's Mrs Fox. Hearing such typically UK English prose adapted to Anderson's American 'Hey, Man's is grating for those familiar with Dahl's book. Similarly, the plot and settings loosely resembled Dahl's, with over half of the plot being Anderson's creation, and the bits that come from Dahl's book being changed so greatly. In Anderson's favour, this film had his typical rhythm, style, pace, and his depressed, staccatoed, little-explained characters, but then why take a story with such a different pace, with a completely style and with such different characters? Admittedly, Quentin Blake's illustrations live vividly in the mind of many Dahl readers and seem to so perfectly illustrate Dahl's dark, twisted and curious characters. However, it is not the animation that leaves alienates me from this film. The animation is generally well done, although, again, Anderson's overtones bear strongly on the animation, with each character bearing an Anderson 'twitch'.
I did my best to try to understand this as an 'Anderson' film and rate it based on that, but the incongruity of this film to the story it's based on gave me little enjoyment.