Fantastic Mr. Fox

As a fan of both old school animation and Wes Anderson, I was seriously looking forward to seeing this movie.  Based on the children's book by Roald Dahl, author of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," this fantasy features the fantastic Mr. Fox and his woodland friends as they feast on their neighboring farmers' fare and the frenetic feud that follows - ha, take that Mrs. Orlando and your 3rd grade lesson on alliteration!

As an homage to the stop-motion animation of yesterday, I personally appreciated the movie's charm using claymation.  It's like stepping back into a childhood memory, back to the days of watching the original Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer movies or Wallace and Gromit. If you've moved on from those days and Avatar's now more your speed, you'll most certainly find the movie to be a petrified dinosaur turd pulled out from the depths of cinematic history.

I've been a long time fan of Wes Anderson's past works, with Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums considered classics in my movie collection.  With quirky plots full of oddball characters, while the Anderson's trademark style translates well to animation, to me it's starting to feel somewhat redundant and overextended.  And while I once found his humor to be subtle and dry-witted, I'm beginning to just feel like I'm missing something.  Several times during the movie I found myself laughing and then thinking, "wait, was that really funny or was I just laughing because I think I'm supposed to be laughing."

Don't get me wrong, this movie does have some great belly laughs in it, and much of that is helped thanks to a great cast that includes George Clooney, Meryll Streep, Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman.  Wild animals taking themselves seriously in human situations also doesn't hurt either - a fox and a badger growling at each other over a subprime housing mortgage is rather funny after all.

After first leaving the theater, I didn't know what to think about Mr. Fox.  So I turned to my friend "A" and asked her what she thought of it, not knowing anything about the movie going into the theater and being completely unfamiliar with Wes Anderson's previous work.  She hesitated for a moment and replied, "well, it was cute."  Yeouch!  How many filmmakers want their audience to leave saying that!?  The problem is, she's right, it was just...cute.

Maybe I built this up too high in my head as unfortunately, Fantastic Mr. Fox is...well...not as fantastic as I'd hoped, forcing me to give it a BREW & VIEW IT! 

Meet your woodland friends and view the trailer!