FILM REVIEW Fantastic Mr Fox

Fantastic Mr Fox lives up to its name


Cinema
Daniel Carey

“A MAN can’t change what he is. He can convince anyone he’s someone else, but never himself.” So Verbal Kint (Kevin Spacey) comments in ‘The Usual Suspects’, explaining how dirty ex-cop Dean Keaton (Gabriel Byrne) is persuaded to return to a life of crime.
The idea of ‘one last job’ is an old movie staple, and it is also referenced in ‘Fantastic Mr Fox’, Wes Anderson’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s book. But in this case, the ‘heist’ isn’t a bank job, it’s a ‘three-hander’ that involves stealing the wares of local farmers, Boggis, Bunce and Bean (one fat, one short, one mean). As the animal puts it himself: “How happy can a fox be without … a chicken in its mouth?”
Mr Fox (voiced by George Clooney) has grown tired of his life of domesticity, which involves writing a newspaper column. He craves the excitement of a nocturnal raid – and he really likes to eat poultry. But his SAS-type incursions prompt the farmers to combine forces and set about killing him.
As a child, I was a huge fan of the book, published in 1970, and really enjoyed the movie too, though it’s by no means a blow-by-blow retelling. But I’m not sure it’s really a kids’ film at all. Like many Wes Anderson vehicles – such as ‘The Royal Tenenbaums’, for which he received an Oscar nomination – it’s pretty surreal at times.
Some examples? Well, at one stage Mrs Fox (delightfully voiced by Meryl Streep) asks incredulously: “Am I being flirted with by a psychotic rat?” Later on, the fox family do a dance number in a supermarket, and in between, Mr Fox addresses a wolf in French after phrases in English and Latin go unheeded.
Anderson (who also co-authored the screenplay) has great fun juxtaposing the sophistication of animals who dabble in pop psychology one minute, and then revert to being wild animals the next – most notably when they devour food at table.
None of this is bad news for those of us who generally like Anderson’s quirky humour. It’s likely to strike a chord with people who have fond memories of reading the book, and the stop-motion technique the director favours offers some delights for those of more mature years. There are plenty of good reversals of fortune, but the action sequences may be a little stale for younger viewers.
Some of the themes explored are also quite advanced for a children’s movie, such as media coverage of the hillside dig, and the death of an animal who acts as a sentry for the humans. Mr Fox is quite a flawed character. Clever but egotistical, he’s rather like Danny Ocean, whom Clooney played in ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ and its sequels.
Ash, Mr Fox’s son (voiced by Jason Schwartzman) is a chronic under-achiever, desperate for attention from his talented dad, and rather put out by the arrival of his talented cousin Kristofferson (Eric Anderson). Bean is the best drawn of the farmers, and Michael Gambon lends him an air of intelligence that makes him a suitable nemesis for the sly old fox.
There has been much comment in the British press about how all of the (good) animals speak with American accents, while the (bad) humans are English. In a world where four-legged creatures speak three languages, it’s not a gripe likely to bother Irish audiences too much.
‘Fantastic Mr Fox’ isn’t quite (if you’ll pardon the pun) on the same level as ‘Up’. But it’s very original, a good evening’s entertainment, and likely to leave you with a smile on your face.

Rating 8.5 out of 10