Foxy

No, I have not yet seen Avatar; it is on the "to do" list, though. This past weekend, rather than fight the crowds to see James Cameron's new movie, I took the opportunity to catch up on a recent film that would not be drawing droves of people. I saw director Wes Anderson's new stop motion animated feature, Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Wes Anderson is the man who directed many "slightly off center" movies such as The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Royal Tenenbaums, and Rushmore. Despite the switch away from live action, this film is very much part of the same family as those others. It's just not quite normal.

Based on the book by Roald Dahl, it tells the story of a cunning fox who lives for poaching animals from farms. But when he and his wife get into a tight spot, he promises to change his ways and "go straight." And yet now, years later (that's fox-years), he feels the itch to pull off one last big heist, hitting three area farms controlled by a wicked trio of farmers.

If it sounds a little Ocean's Eleven-esque, that's surely intentional. The movie taps into that sort of breezy, fun vibe at times. And so who else to get to provide the voice of the Fox but George Clooney? He's joined by Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, and Michael Gambon, in a really grand cast. I've heard that the actors improvised a fair amount of their dialogue based around the scene content provided for them, and it does show in the finished product -- in a good way. The characters are all characters, in the sense that they're heightened and a bit larger than life, but they also feel very natural and correct for this world.

But it is a bit of a strange world. The quirky stop motion techniques used in the movie prove a bit distracting at times. All the animal models have very fine, real hair on their faces and bodies. When moved in successive frames to create the animation, it was simply impossible to not disturb the hairs while moving the figures into new poses. As a result, the hairs are flying all over the place in every shot, and do so most distractingly in any close-ups. I'm sure this was intentional, and that some might praise the artistic choice, but I found it a constant barrier to accepting the world of the film as a total reality; the artificiality was too overpowering.

The story is fun, though, if not revolutionary. Though the previews before the movie were a non-stop parade of children's movies, Fantastic Mr. Fox itself did not ever pander down to children. It was a movie made for any age to enjoy. I rate it a B-. Since it's likely on the tail end of its theatrical run anyway, it might not be one to rush out and see. But I would recommend checking it out at the least when it hits DVD.