Plot: Mr. and Mrs. Fox live an idyllic home life with their son, Ash, and visiting young nephew, Kristopherson. But after 12 years, the bucolic existence proves too much for Mr. Fox's wild animal instincts. Soon he slips back into his old ways as a sneaky chicken thief and in doing so, endangers not only his beloved family, but the whole animal community. Trapped underground and with not enough food to go around, the animals band together to fight against the evil farmers - Boggis, Bunce and Bean - who are determined to capture the audacious, fantastic Mr. Fox at any cost. (via.)
Nicole's Rating: A+
Matt Hasn't Seen This Yet? For Real?: Two things I love: 1) Children's books, and so by default, Roald Dahl. And 2) Wes Anderson, whose movie The Royal Tenenbaums makes my top two of all time list. Still, I was really skeptical of the combination of these two things that I love, not realizing just how perfect the pairing could be.
Voice acted by a fabulous cast (George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, etc) and animated via the wonderfully nostalgic stop-motion art form - The Fantastic Mr. Fox manages to capture both the whimsical nature of the book and the depth of emotion usually conveyed by the super talented Mr. Anderson.
I have a feeling that Matt will be as pleasantly surprised as I was.
Matt's Rating: B+
Matt's Review: Pleasantly surprised? Yes. Pleasantly surprised enough to give it an A+? No.
I really enjoyed the movie. I was afraid that it was going to be Wes Anderson trying to make a children's movie, which to me spells disaster. Luckily, Anderson did the opposite. He made a children's book into a watchable movie that most people, specifically adults, can enjoy. The voice acting is great (specifically George Clooney and Jason Schwartzman). The stop motion is great because it is not the typical stop motion we used to from Tim burton but rather something mroe old school which gave it a fantastic (see what I did there) nostalgic feel. This helped to cause it to have a Wes Anderson feel, which is always something I look forward to (I would say enjoy, but thats not the right word is it?).
My complaint is that I felt that sometimes it went all over the place. I remember not being sure why certain characters were doing certain things and it was a little cheesy at times. It was a good movie but not nearly as good as Anderson's best live action movies. Therefore, it can't get an A....but it can come pretty damn close.
I do find myself clicking a whistling whenever I have a good idea now though, which is kind of annoying.
What about you? What did you love about this Wes Anderson/Roald Dahl stop-animation classic? Leave us your thoughts in the comments!
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