Fantastic Mr. Fox

Welcome back readers. Hopefully my last post, Inside Man, has kept you wanting more reviews of films and I’m looking forward to continuing to provide that service. The latest post from Tillman 313 is about the film Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Fantastic Mr. Fox is an animated stop-motion film that was released in the fall of 2009. The film is based off of the novel of the same name written by Roald Dahl. Dahl also wrote the immensely popular novel, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which has been made into the classic, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, released in 1971, and the remake, released in 2005, starring Johnny Depp.

The plot of the story revolves, as you may have guessed, around Mr. Fox, voiced by George Clooney. Mr. Fox is a cunning thief that steals anything he can from three farmers. One day his wife, voiced by Meryl Streep, tells him that she is pregnant and she wants him to take up a more serious, less dangerous profession. He agrees and the film jumps ahead to two years, or twelve fox years, later. He has a child, and has a respectable profession, but the simple life is not for him. He resorts to his old ways of thievery and endangers his family, as well as the rest of the animal community. The three farmers force the animals underground and due to limited food supplies, the animals band together for one last job to fight for what’s theirs.

The director of the film is Wes Anderson. He has been around the movie business since 1994 when he wrote the short film Bottle Rocket. Due to the success of the short film, he filmed a motion picture, based on the short film, starring Owen Wilson and Luke Wilson. Anderson has also directed the films The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic of Steve Zissou. During the filming of The Life Aquatic, the collaboration of Fantastic Mr. Fox began. Five years later, the film was released.

Fantastic Mr. Fox has a fantastic voice cast. Headlined by the talents of George Clooney and Meryl Streep as Mr. and Mrs. Fox, the film also boasts voice work by Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, Willem Dafoe, and Michael Gambon.

Stop-motion is not a new direction style but has never been incredibly popular in the film industry. Hopefully with Fantastic Mr. Fox more films will take the same approach instead of using costly CGI, that is incredibly necessary. But that might just be me.

The way it was filmed was by using puppets and using metal plates to help manipulate the face. The most famous stop-motion films involving puppetry are Coraline, Corpse Bride, James and the Giant Peach, and The Nightmare Before Christmas.

This film is really well done and the voice cast worked together nicely. Overall, through a great story, based off of the novel by Roald Dahl, and direction by Wes Anderson, this film was nominated for two Academy Awards: Best Original Score and Best Animated Feature Film of the Year. It did not do well at the box office, making only about 21 million dollars out of an estimated 40 million dollar budget. Reviews were fairly positive on most major film sites and my review for the film is 4 stars out of 5 stars.

If you want a fun children’s film that has a great story, I’d recommend checking it out. Upcoming film reviews are Black Swan, Shawshank Redemption, Rio, and Lord of War. If you want me to review any others, let me know and I’ll add them to the list.