Review: Fantastic Mr. Fox

Haven't written anything in the last week. I blame this on my chronic battles with apathy.

I've seen some movies as of late, though, and since I really am at a loss for other things to write about, I'm going to offer a few mini reviews... unless if my first one becomes a lot longer than I am planning it to be. Then it's going to be one review.

Fantastic Mr. Fox

Verdict: Wes Anderson should stick to animation from now on.

It was pretty easy to see that his schtick was probably getting stale, as each film since Rushmore has slowly regressed in quality. But this whole animation thing injected a new life into him (you know, despite the fact that apparently he did jack squat during the making of the movie), and it allows him to indulge in even more whimsy than he's used to, and he gets away with it. Like the scenes in which the animals randomly break out into jigs whenever they fell upon some loot--if you saw Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman break out into a dance at a key moment in the movie, you'd think it's the stupidest thing ever put to film. But since it's animation, and it allows for more flight of fancy, it works.

It also helps that as a whole, the film is much more optimistic and joyous in tone and spirit than anything else he's done. Sure, it has its darker elements, but it definitely doesn't have Luke Wilson cutting his wrists over Gwenyth Paltrow set to Elliot Smith music either. This is probably due to the fact that, as a PG rated movie that is an adaptation of a children's book, the darker material had to be scrapped. But it's good, because the existential dilemmas that Anderson's characters began to feel started to seemed tacked on by the time The Darjeeling Limited came out.

There's a few minor problems. Mr. Fox has this trademark whistle that sort of grates on the nerves, and when someone finally mentions the whistle, they don't completely tear it apart as being stupid and pointless like I was secretly hoping for. And really, the characters really aren't all that engaging, and I honestly can't say that any particular part of the story bowled me over either.

But whatever. It was fun, joyous, humorous, and pretty much everything I was hoping for and then some. Sometimes that's all you need in a film.

RATING:


So it ended up just being one review. Oh well.