Fantastic Mr Fox
from 61 reviews
£16.83
Released:23/03/2010
More Details
Studio:20th Century Fox
Amazon.co.uk Review
The visually ravishing animated movie Fantastic Mr. Fox follows a fox, voiced by George Clooney and dressed in a natty brown corduroy suit, as he cheerfully and recklessly takes his thieving ways a little too far and brings down the wrath of some sour-faced poultry farmers on his family and friends. Based on a book by children's author Roald Dahl (who wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach), the movie is the work of Wes Anderson (writer-director of Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums), who expanded and elaborated on the original story; the combination is inspired. Anderson's sensibility--his fondness for meticulous compositions, coordinated colors, and narrative filigree--can sometimes seem finicky and stiff in live-action movies, but it's exquisitely suited to the painstaking art of stop-motion animation. Every corner of the screen crackles with visual invention and whimsical humor. The top-notch vocal cast (which also features Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Michael Gambon, Owen Wilson, and others) create vivid personalities that perfectly mesh with the movie's lush colors and luscious textures. Fantastic Mr. Fox is an off-beat gem, a giddy mix of adult emotional issues, wild animal behaviour, and childlike delight.--Bret Fetzer, Amazon.com
Stills from Fantastic Mr Fox (click for more from the stars) George Clooney
|  Meryl Streep |  Jason Schwartzman | |
 Michael Gambon |  Owen Wilson |  Willem Dafoe | |
 Wally Wolodarsky |  |  |  |
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Tags
Animation, Cartoons & Animation, Comedy, Family, Feature Film Family, Movie
Reviews
- adored it
This is a great-looking film made with traditional stop-go animation and it is not meant to be all about CGI and special-effects. The end result is gorgeous. The animals have a slight jumpiness to their movements but that is the style of the movie and strangely realistic. The score is also very simple, mainly (wholly?) a drum that you hear whenever the action it about to speed up. I found this entirely adequate, stylish, and even humorous. The creatures themselves are gorgeous to look at. George Clooney gives a faultless, stylish, humorous performance as Mr Fox. The story is about a fox who has settled down into marriage but who can't resist one more adventure. I loved it and so did my six-year-old and not many movies can reach such a wide age range as that!
OK, first of all, I had never read the book before I saw the film, so I saw this film without any preconceptions. This film is loved by my 5 and 2 year old daughters, so I have probably seen it 50 times (and more), and I can honestly say I still enjoy it!!The characters are brilliant and there is constant humour in the script and visual play. George Clooney is perfect as Mr Fox and the cameos by Willem Dafoe (Its ma Ja-o-o-ob) as the psychotic rat and Jarvis Cocker as Petey, victim of a brilliant put-down by Bean (That's just weak songwriting Petey, you wrote a bad song) are worth the price of admission alone. Having read the book since, it is obvious that the book was the skeleton on which the film was built, but it wouldn't sustain a feature film. There are many changes in the film-the main characters are fleshed out and fully realised, many additional characters and many extra scenes are used to add colour and flavour, to such an extent that fans of the book should not view this as a film of the book at all. It is, however a lot of fun, with an all-star cast, the photography gives it a delightful overall feel, the soundtrack moves from 60s rock to a spaghetti western feel an the humour and action never lets up.
I know a few people who have seen this film and not liked it - people I expected to love it. I suppose I can understand why they didn't like it; if they went into the film expecting Roald Dahl story, they got something different. To a large degree this is the Roald Dahl story we all love, but it is also very much a Wes Anderson film. If you haven't seen a Wes Anderson film, but are interested in seeing this, then expect proud dysfunctional families and oddball humour. This is a film for adults (for example, whenever a character would normally swear (in the context of an adult film) here they replace the swearing with the word 'Cuss' eg. "this is a cluster-cuss", "shut the cuss up" etc.) but is also visually very funny and would appeal to kids. This films tone is just right in my opinion. It's Wes Anderson doing Fantastic Mr Fox. Just as you'd imagine it, but probably funnier.
Also, and as usual, it has a brilliant soundtrack which is worth buying independently of the film.
Fantastic Mr. Fox is a 2009 stop-motion animated film based on the Roald Dahl children's novel of the same name.
Most of the film's pleasures are for discerning adult eyes that delight in craftsmanship and the meticulous framing of every scene. This artfulness could alienate a mainstream audience of kids, but Anderson is lucky, because his story is already known and loved, so his audience has an in-built bias to like his film.
It's the story of Mr Fox (voiced by George Clooney), who has left behind the thrill of his wild, chicken-stealing days and settled down with his wife (Meryl Streep) and one cub, Ash (Jason Schwartzman). They are joined by their gifted cousin Kristofferson (Eric Chase Anderson), who gains the admiration of Mr Fox and the envy of Ash. The dissatisfactions of middle age cause Mr Fox to break his promise to his wife and return to stealing from three local farmers, Bean (Michael Gambon), Boggis (Brian Cox) and Bunce (Hugo Guinness). This leads to a fight to the finish between the farmers and Mr Fox and his animal friends.
The film certainly has Americanised Dahl's story, and I don't mean the fact that the good animals have American accents and the baddies have British ones. It offers yet another celebration of difference and a lesson on the importance of being yourself. But it does leave you thinking: isn't it time that children's films put children first?
There are plenty of reviews of the film itself elsewhere here, so I'll mainly stick to comments regarding the Blu-Ray transfer (when is Amazon going to stop lumping together the same reviews for Cinema, Blu-Ray and DVD releases by the way?). For what it's worth, I very much enjoyed this movie and, while veering away considerably from the novel I remember reading some 20-plus years ago, I can't think of a more suitable way to bring Fantastic Mr Fox to the screen.
The animation techniques used here, while unusual and more representative of Tim Burton than Nick Park, seem all the more suitable as the movie progresses. I can't imagine any other way of representing the characters and world in which they live and after about 10 minutes the technique, for some reason, starts to feel, well, right.
I get the impression that a lot of the negative criticism levelled at this release stems from the expectation that this is a kids' film, which although being suitable for a young age group, I would tend to say would be appreciated more by a mature audience.
I would disagree with the anti-Americanising views in other reviews - every animal is voiced by an American actor, and every human by a Brit. For some reason, this also just feels right for reasons I can't put my finger on. It's a good way of separating the animal kingdom from the human world.
Anyway, the Blu-Ray transfer is an absolute pearl. Every single hair on every single animal character's head is immaculately represented in swathes of beautiful colour and pixel perfect detail. Even the backgrounds and numerous sets, while not always on a large scale, repeatedly impress from scene to scene. Witness the sequence where Mr Fox talks to his wife while standing in front of a waterfall, or any of the outdoor scenes set against that awesome sunset lighting shading, for example.
I haven't seen this represented in many "titles to show off your home cinema setup" lists, which seems a bit odd considering how good it looks and sounds (DTS soundtrack if I recall correctly). And yes, I have compared the Blu-Ray version of the film with the DVD disc in the Triple Play edition, and there is a massive difference between the Standard and High Definitions.
Definitely worth a buy, but perhaps not what people would expect.
