A really cussing pleasing movie experience

Rating: 8/10 (6 July 2018)

As part of my flight to Boston in preparation for our camp, American Airlines had this movie as an option for in-flight entertainment. Given its placement on my watchlist, I figured I would be opportunistic. What do I think?
To start with, this film is written in a way that puts it at the middle ground between children's and adult's animation. It adapts Dahl's children's novel into something a tad more heavy-hearted. I won't talk about the story too much since it succeeded in adapting the novel, but its additions (such as the capture of Kristofferson) are written in a way that actually work out in its favor. Our characters benefit from this too, with the combination of familiarity from the novel and somewhat modern twists to their personality (such as Kristofferson's flair for meditation). It actually seems that both our protagonists and antagonists can be sympathized with; out of mere nature, the former want their food and the latter want to keep them away. While the Foxes can be summed up as the usual family of 3, I enjoyed Rat's threatening demeanor, Petey's music, and Kylie's comic stare. What really strengthens the characters, however, is the believable and spot-on voice acting. It fits both the cartoonish influence of Dahl's novel for some characters and the different aim of this movie for others. The stop motion environments feel like they are very comparable to Aardman's work, with the detail on the fields and locations, the unique character models. Like Kubo and the Two Strings, the animation possesses surprising fluidity in the movements of both characters and objects, which is wonderful for its assortment of action/peril scenes.
This isn't really a "children's" movie as much as it is a family movie. Children will enjoy the cute animals and the similarities to Dahl's work, while adults will enjoy the action, humor, and less light-hearted tone. It's worth 87 minutes of anyone's time, really, and I'll be cussed if anyone didn't end up having a good thing to say about it. OK, maybe once was enough...