New release
The Sunday Age
Sunday January 3, 2010
Rating: 3.5/5FANTASTIC MR FOX(PG, 94 minutes). On general releaseRight from the start, it's clear that Wes Anderson's animated adaptation of Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr Fox has been transferred from the countryside surrounding the late Dahl's home in Buckinghamshire's Great Missenden all the way to the other side of the pond. Mr Fox (voiced by George Clooney and animated by stop motion techniques) is standing by a statuesque tree atop a hill, musing about life's vicissitudes with the sounds of the Wellingtons singing The Ballad of Davy Crockett on the soundtrack. A few moments later, as he and his wife (Meryl Streep, in a role originally slated for Cate Blanchett) romp around and get themselves into a fine mess, it's to the sounds of the Beach Boys and Heroes & Villains. I doubt that Dahl would have been the least perturbed by this, or by any of the new characters, details or incidents that Anderson has dropped into his story. I suspect that he might even have enjoyed most of the ways in which Anderson (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums) has made the tale his own. It's still a story about animals honouring their instincts and bringing pesky humans down a peg or two. But it's also a classically American comedy about an amiable rogue €” Mr Fox €” knuckling down to being a responsible family man. Clooney even voices him like a character out of a 1930s screwball comedy. At the same time, Anderson makes Fantastic Mr Fox into a story about a family getting its act together. There is a scene where Mr Fox muses existential about why he doesn't hail from some other species, but Anderson's film is also less a children's story about foxes and humans than it is a populist comedy about little guys bringing some big ones down. The only thing that Dahl might have objected to is that, while the good guys here speak with American accents, the bad ones (led by Michael Gambon) are noticeably British. However one describes it, though, Fantastic Mr Fox is mischievously funny and very entertaining.
© 2010 The Sunday Age
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