The Erractic Mr. Fox

Rating: 3/10 (17 January 2011)

The base for "The Fantastic Mr. Fox" is the beloved children's book by British iconic author Roald Dahl. As in the original the film focuses on life ordeals of Mr. Fox and his family. The premise for the story is Mr. Fox's stealing spree of chickens, ducks, turkeys and cider, which make him top of the most wanted list of despicable farmers Boggis, Bunce and Bean. Unlike in the original instead of a fox basically trying to cater and feed his family in this outing we have a typical dysfunctional Wes Anderson family, whose papa is addicted to stealing. Not to mention that his son is an irritating little bugger, whilst you also get a key new addition of kick-boxing super-athlete cousin Kristofferson . Oh! And did I mention that all the animals in the forest are Americans (which really makes the movie jar throughout, as the characters are cool hipster forest animals). Meanwhile the farmers remaining outstandingly British.
I can and will forgive the scriptwriter (Wes Anderson) for basically taking a dump on the whole sense, premise and feeling of the story. I will in this case treat "Fantastic Mr. Fox" as something totally unrelated to the book (which remains outside of Anderson's capabilities to ever achieve as long as he resolves to sticking to his gameplan).
I will not however gloss over the fact, that the animation has neither the humour and wit of Nick Park, the intelligence and unforgettable charm of Hayao Miyazaki or the heart of Pixar. The only thing that Anderson has is... quirkiness. I have never seemed to be able to understand the almost unanimous critic appeal of Wes Anderson (albeit his cult adoration thankfully does not seem to extend too far outside American borders). I never found his movies profound, if anything to me they reeked of pretentious artsy drivel (including the underwhelming "Rushmore"). Additionally Wes Anderson seems to be incapable of directing movies with likable leads - even in "The Fantastic Mr. Fox" the charmless title character played by George Clooney sounds like a George Clooney with a persistent headache on Valium impression. The only actor that manages to ring true is Meryl Streep as Ms. Fox, but her role is relatively insignificant and secondary. As usual I also found the lines nowhere as deep, meaningful and brilliant as Anderson believes them to be. Actually they mostly felt flat and written by an adolescent during Sunday school. Whats worse the add-on quirky jokes are tragically unfunny and I found myself battling to even produce a single smirk during this ordeal.
The worst thing is however that I have no idea who the target audience is. The plot plods along at snails pace and the characters are whiny, cajoling, boring and unlikeable with a unrelenting need to spit out inappropriate inside jokes (not to mention they are constantly 'cussing' with standout lines like: ""This is going to be a total cluster-cuss for everyone". What the cuss?). Additionally they are hard to understand due to seemingly inherent articulation flaws. Not to mention that some of the animation (one of the few brilliant things in the movie) is eerie, creepy and frightful in a very inappropriate manner. That basically means the whole base audience of kids is not suited for this visualisation of the children's book making it an obscure attempt at mainstream by Wes Anderson, which easily explains the poor sales of the movie.
If we are to believe that this is an animation for adults, than well... I will never jump onto the Wes Anderson band waggon, even though I'm quite sure all the negative feedback I will get for my above review. I find Anderson's films unmemorable, unimaginative and tiresome dragging on like a snail with rheumatism. Basically a animation soap-opera.
I would really love to catch the drift and hop on-board the Anderson love-boat, but with this dreadfully boring animation of a brilliant children's book this revelation will have to be put on hold. Until than count me out of this adoration.