Butas they say in the U.N. General Assembly, the human response is“disproportionate,” kind of like leveling a village because a boy hurled astone against a tank.
Andersoninventively scripted and directed Fantastic Mr. Fox from a story by Roald Dahl (of Willy Wonka fame), depicting thecharacters and their setting with puppetry photographed in stop motion and setamid models and painted backdrops. More magic is produced by not bendingbackwards to appear realistic in the tiresome way of computer-generatedanimation when deployed by uninventive minds. Polishing an apple he justplucked from a tree against his corduroy blazer, Mr. Fox is a roguish dandyamong animals, walking on two legs and holding down a job as a newspapercolumnist without entirely losing his beastly hunger for danger.
Foxpromised his wife, Felicity (Meryl Streep), that he would give up raidingchicken coops on the night she told him she was pregnant (his mortifiedexpression at the news signals that this is a children’s film for adults).Running through Fantastic Mr. Fox isthe existential dilemma of what we are as a species and the higher ideals wehold. It’s instinct versus responsibility, each pole gaining and waning intheir hold over the thoughts and deeds of Mr. Fox.
Thereare, in keeping with Anderson’s previous films, misunderstood youths trying tofind their footing. Fox’s son Ash (Jason Schwartzman) acts up because otherssee him as a gray shadow of his accomplished father. Ash’s unwelcome roommate,Cousin Kristofferson (Eric Anderson), is another character from Darjeeling Limited, practicingmeditation and occasionally manifesting his inner discipline by pummelinganimal bullies.
It’sthe people, however, who are the worst in this consistently amusing,occasionally laugh-out-loud comedy of conflict. Losing valuable livestock andgoods from the nocturnal raids of Mr. Fox and his neurotic opossum sidekick,they try to kill the Foxes in an escalating series of battles that eventuallypits the wild things of the woods against the farmers, townsfolk and the animalsclosest to humanitydogs and rats. Anderson injects his screenplay with manydroll touches, especially using the word “cuss” in place of harsh expletives,as in Mr. Fox’s realization: “This is going to be a total cluster cuss foreverybody.” It is, but along the way, the Foxes and friends discover the valueof community, expressed, in Mr. Fox’s words, to be “thankful and aware of eachother.”
