A great movie I totally recommend

Rating: 9/10 (10 May 2010)

Fantastic Mr. Fox is a brilliant animation film with a charming "retro" animation, a fascinating screenplay and sparkling voice acting from the whole cast (the members who stand out are, by my point of view, George Clooney, Meryl Streep and Bill Murray).
Fantastic Mr. Fox is based on a book written by Roald Dahl (1916-1990), one of the few authors who have enjoyed quite a luck with the film adaptations from their books.Movies such as The Witches, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) respected on a big degree Dahl's unusual tone of prose, oriented to children but never condescending or simpleton.Fantastic Mr. Fox is an addition to that honourable group thanks to the irreverent humor co-screenwriters Wes Anderson (who was also the director) and Noah Baumbach brought to the screenplay, stylishly merging the adventure destined to the childish spectators with commentaries on adult subjects.
The first thing which strikes in Fantastic Mr. Fox is the rudimentary style of "stop motion" animation employed to bring the characters to life.This old technique has been replaced in the two last decades by the more efficient digital animation, but even the few movies which are still made with "stop motion" (such as Coraline or The Corpse Bride) show a perfect manufacture which is mistake-free and polished to the point of sterility.On the contrary, Anderson and the effects supervisor Tim Ledbury chose a more simple and organic system which stresses the craft value of that discipline, and it makes the "mistakes" (such as the characteristic "rippling" which is noted on the models as a consequence of its manipulation during the animation by hand) to take part into its charm and personality.And the same applies to the ingenious models which work as scenarios and backgrounds, which are full of funny details which do not obstruct their work of creating an imaginative and consistent set.
However, Fantastic Mr. Fox offers much more than attractive images.Its screenplay is surprisingly mature for a family film, and even though its characters are anthropomorphic animals, they are not used as excuse to reduce the level of the narrative.On the contrary, the adventures of Mr. Fox are exciting and very entertaining, but what I mostly liked was the dynamic with its wife and son, as well as its interaction with friends, enemies and the rest of the community.The result is an absolutely fascinating film experience.
The only fail I found on this movie is that a few elements from the screenplay are not very well polished.But that minor fail did not avoid me from enjoying Fantastic Mr. Fox very much.I totally recommend it, because even if we ignore its multiple levels of narrative deepness, we basically have an hilarious comedy with nice characters, brilliant dialogs and a hugely entertaining screenplay.We really need more animation movies like this one.