Fantastic Mr. Fox

I was sceptical about ‘Fantastic Mr Fox’. The trailer didn’t interest me, during all its publicity at the time of its cinema release I cringed at every film poster, film tie-in novel, and sticker book merchandise that I saw everywhere. I love Roald Dahl but I was so put off by the look of this film that I avoided it like the plague. Which is why, I have only just now seen it when I found myself thinking, ‘why not? Everyone says it’s good, what have I got to lose?’

Boy had I got it wrong!

This film cracked me up on so many different levels! It was brilliant! The stop motion animation was incredible, and the voices were superb.

First of all, while this was filmed in stop-motion it had a lot of the humour that is usually found in cartoons. And to see it in another medium was great! Brief sight gags, nonsense dialogue and awkward pauses while characters look at each other all worked perfectly to bring to life the type of fun that reading a Roald Dahl novel is like. It’s too Funny!

The casting was great too! While I’m not a George Clooney fan, his voice suited Mr Fox ‘fantastically’! But all of them were flawlessly suited to each of the characters and there were a nice mix of easily recognisable actors and those who I didn’t know about. Some characters (eg. Kylie voiced by Wallace Wolodarsky) had me laughing loudly with almost everything they said.

In all my ‘judging before knowing anything about it’ and ‘avoiding for the sake of avoiding’ it wasn’t until I had sat through all the delicious nonsense, enjoyed myself thoroughly and decided that this was definitely one to watch again in the near future, when the credits began to roll and I discovered that it was a Wes Anderson film. This discovery both explained much of the nonsense (in its delivery, Roald Dahl must be given credit for the majority of it) and was a bit of a final ‘why was I avoiding this movie’ moment. I love his other films and probably would have seen it sooner had I paid any attention to the fact that he was the director.

What this entire review boils down to is: if you haven’t seen this film, you must. And if you have, you probably need to watch it again for good measure. I know I will be!