We continue to care for the foxes in this film, even when they do get into deep cuss

Rating: 8/10 (27 June 2012)

I always thought it was a delight to see a director step out of their comfort zone and direct a film they usually don't touch. Kevin Smith did with Red State, Martin Scorsese does it every film, but one of his most noticeable was Hugo, and now, Wes Anderson takes his indelible quirkiness and injects it into the pleasant animated film, Fantastic Mr. Fox.
I hope everyone at some point read a book by Roald Dahl, whether it was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, this, James and the Giant Peach, or The Witches. It seems almost all children were acquainted with his books at one point or another. Authors like that become etched into school curriculum. Joining Dahl can be the late Maurice Sendak, Beverly Clearly, or perhaps, for elementary-schoolers, the author of Holes and the Wayside series, Louis Sachar.
Fantastic Mr. Fox presents us with the story of Mr. Fox (voiced by George Clooney), his wife, Felicity (Meryl Streep), and their twelve-year-old son, Ash (Jason Schwartzman). Mr. Fox is having a difficult time remaining collective since, well, he's a wild fox. Being that the tree that live in is very close to factories run by strict farmers and Mr. Fox has urges that desperately need to be fulfilled, him and his pal, Kylie Sven Opposum (Wallace Wolodarsky) decide they should try and steal produce from their farm. This becomes a recurring habit, and eventually leads to a war between the farmers and the burrowing foxes.
The film is occupies a delightful elegance in its stop motion animation. Its characters, right down to the fur on their backs, are animated with rich and inviting colors, as well as the sets they live in clearly being meticulously detailed. The style is primitive and great to look at, and provides us with a different form of animated entertainment instead of Pixar, Dreamworks, and Disney monopolizing the field.
One positive is that the film doesn't become buried under its own quirkiness so much so that we care little about the characters, which tends to happen in many of Wes Anderson's other pictures. What we have is a solid script, taken a step further than usual, along with big name actors subtly providing the voices behind these characters, so as not to throw in our face what big stars the movie has, and we continue to care for the foxes in this film, even when they do get into deep cuss.
Voiced by: George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Eric Chase Anderson, Bill Murray, and Owen Wilson. Directed by: Wes Anderson.