Cast: (voices) George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Michael Duffy

Director: Wes Anderson

Screenplay: Wes Anderson, Noah Baumbach

Running time: 1 hr 27 mins

Genre: Animation/Adventure/Family



CRITIQUE:


Let’s face it – it is quite hard to mistake a Wes Anderson film. No other director has as much singular style as any American filmmakers these days as distinctive and instantly recognisable as Anderson’s cinematic art-stamp. He has done brilliant if madcap things to the dysfunctional-family genre what Tim Burton has done to the Gothic oddities. Consider, then, for a moment his latest cinematic stamp Fantastic Mr Fox, an adaptation of a Roald Dahl children’s classic. From a director who brought us a body of work that enlivened American independent filmmaking, from Rushmore to The Royal Tenenbaums, films that fused vintage-style with an ironic hipness palatable to a modern host of young, trendy cinema-conscious audience, it seems a strange choice to follow his quirky efforts with animation. This time, picking up one of children’s literary giant as Spike Jonze did to Where The Wild Things Are, Anderson has hit the marks. The result of this choice of medium has further enhanced Anderson’s vision, and his old-fashioned, stop-motion animated foxes are wonderful creatures to behold.


Ignore his last cinematic toils, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and The Darjeeling Limited, which were both plainly style and madcap whimsy over substance. Fantastic Mr Fox is easily Anderson’s best film since The Royal Tenenbaums, incorporating his knack for offbeat characters, droll, dry humour and familial angst and turmoil, all laid out with a ravishing autumnal background palette and infused with 60’s folk rock soundtrack. The animation is refreshingly anti-pixels, as compared to Pixar’s pixel-perfect glossy CGI vistas, favouring a hand-crafted look rather than digitalised – with each foxes replete with their own fashion style, bristling furs and trademark movements – although they all look weird when they break out dancing. Anderson has also a keen eye to the minutest of details, his backdrop teeming with gorgeous autumnal backdrops, the wild countryside contrasted with the farmer’s orderly farmlands. Yet it’s not only visual details, the cast is impressively assembled. Whilst star-power is heavily laden on its posters, they never overpower the weight of the film. George Clooney’s sardonic suaveness gives Mr Fox a droll voice teetering between filial responsibility and middle-age existentialism. It also has Meryl Streep deadpanning all throughout as Mrs Fox, the voice of reason in this tale with a blend of the sensible, ironic and mod-chic. There are other standouts, too. Jason Schwartzmann as the son Ash is painfully insecure and neurotic yet very witty; and Willem Dafoe is incredible in his cameo voice-lending as the Mexican-slurring rat. Watch out for the Sergio Leone-inspired finale, too. It’s quite a delight.



VERDICT:

After a tiring two-hander failure of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and The Darjeeling Limited, Wes Anderson comes back to his surreal yet offbeat form in Fantastic Mr Fox – an utterly delightful, hip, breezy fox caper that achieves a right blend of entertainment, droll humour, stylishness and substance. Above all, this is a film that’s guaranteed to bring a smile to your face, bringing out the kids in adults and vice-versa.



RATING: B+