Mr. Fox (George Clooney) is a fantastic fellow. He is, as a fox must be, a chicken thief. He is a very successful thief, and this makes him very pleased with himself. When his wife announces her pregnancy, Fox swears to go straight.
But even after 12 fox-years, Mr. Fox is still a fox, and decides to pull off one last heist. He plans to attack three farms, each owned by men who are apparently so tyrannical that the local children have written a limerick about them:
Boggis and Bunce and Bean,
One fat, one short, one lean.
These horrible crooks, so different in looks,
Were nonetheless equally mean.
The animals themselves are handled quite differently than most animated furry creatures. They dress like normal humans; they go to school like normal humans; they have jobs like normal humans. They are still animals, though. When Fox and his lawyer Badger (Bill Murray) get into an argument, their words soon devolve into growling, baring their teeth and swiping the air with their paws. The main character’s innate wild nature is a key theme. When Mrs. Fox (Meryl Streep) asks her husband why he has gone back to stealing chickens, he explains lucidly: “Because I’m a wild animal.”
Wes Anderson has successfully brought his clean visual aesthetic to animated movies. Everything is neat and symmetrical. Every tree is precisely placed. The camera doesn’t move around much, and it doesn’t have to. When it does move, it travels side to side, as if we are watching a giant picture book on screen.
The real standout here is Anderson’s ridiculous attention to detail. Since this is a stop-motion animation, everything must be miniaturized. The foam from a champagne bottle is shreds of cotton. Fox’s shirt pocket holds a couple pencils, each of which must be only a fingernail’s length. I still cannot figure out how the genius animators constructed such realistic water, with waves and ripples that are even more fluid than the animation. And the fur! There are plenty of close-up shots, and in all of them it is clear that there are hundreds of hairs on these models. Imagine how long each meticulously detailed shot must have taken to craft.
Even though these are animals, they still have very human issues. Fox’s immature son, Ash (Jason Schwartzman), intensely dislikes his cousin Kristofferson (Eric Anderson). Kristofferson is younger than Ash, but is also taller, more athletic, and smarter than his cousin. Mr. Fox takes a shine to his nephew, praising him after almost everything he does, often in front of Ash. What kind of father would do that?
Wes Anderson has taken Roald Dahl’s children’s book and made it his own with stunning results. It is obvious that enormous dedication went into every colorful, beautiful frame.
