Shot for Suave, Ended Up with Dull; Stop-Motion from Half a Century Ago

Rating: 3/10 (25 November 2009)

Fantastic Mr. Fox (1:26, PG) — Other: Talking Animals, 2nd string, original
Ray Harryhausen's Jason and the Argonauts, with its platoon of sword-wielding skeletons, came out in 1963. For the math-challenged, that's almost half a century ago. You'd think that the state of the art in stop-motion animation would have shown some advances since then. And indeed it has, if you look at the never-ending feast of delights from Nick Park's Aardman Studios, home of Chicken Run and various Wallace & Gromit features. And of course there's Tim Burton's brilliant The Nightmare before Christmas, directed by Henry Selick, who went on to use the technique extensively in Coraline.
Return with us, then, to those halcyon days of half a century ago, this time at feature length, for really crappy stop-motion animation in Fantastic Mr. Fox. The story was based on a book by the estimable and unpredictable Roald Dahl, so you'd think it would have potential, but the screenplay by Noah Baumbach and director/producer Wes Anderson is pretty uninspiring. Mr. Fox (roguishly voiced by the perfect choice, George Clooney) has agreed to give up raiding the henhouse to placate his wife Felicity (Meryl Streep). But, like Danny Ocean, he's gotta go back for 1 more job — well, maybe 2, make that 3 — in the company of his amiable but dull opossum buddy Kylie.
These raids understandably tick off the farmers, Boggis, Bunce, and Bean, and they retaliate against not only the foxes but all the other burrowing creatures in the vicinity, attacking with steam shovels, explosives, and a deluge of apple cider (the specialty of Farmer Bunce), apparently more readily available than plain water. Running, scrambling, some shooting, and encounters with beagles and electric fences ensue, but nobody seems to get particularly worked up over anything. Evidently Anderson was going for suave, but he just ended up with dull.
All the creatures stand upright and wear ill-fitting human clothes. They speak like adults, except for the cloying convention of substituting a standard kid-safe epithet where it's obvious what any normal English speaker would have said, as in "This is going to be a total cluster-cuss for everyone.". Ugh.
Other cast members who probably pulled in substantial paychecks for their efforts include Jason Schwartzman (fox son Ash), Bill Murray (badger), and Willem Dafoe (rat). In return for the savings the producers could have realized by hiring regular voice actors instead of big- name stars, they could have afforded better special effects. But what the pic really needed was another couple of runs thru the typer.
Too bad. This was an effort to try something outside the mainstream, and I normally root for those, but they've still gotta deliver. This one just wasn't anywhere near fantastic enuf.