Fantastic Mr. Fox Review

Fantastic Mr. Fox is probably the most unique movie you’ll see this year, and that’s saying a lot. We’re talking about a year that’s seen films like Coraline, Up, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, and the upcoming Avatar. Still, I think Fantastic Mr. Fox sits on a level of its own.

We saw the movie last night at a free sneak peek in Indianapolis, and there wasn’t an empty seat in the theater. There was a surprising number of adults without kids, but there was plenty of families as well.

The whole theater was rolling with laughter. Fantastic Mr. Fox doesn’t play out like a kid’s movie at all, it’s basically just a Wes Anderson film that happens to be stop motion. The dialog is witty (and hilarious), the voice acting is great, and the staging and attention to detail is what you would expect from an Anderson film.

I wasn’t expecting Fantastic Mr. Fox to be so funny, and just so all around awesome. I thought it was going to be quirky and cute, but I didn’t really know what to expect. I found that I was really into the story and the characters, and I kept thinking about how I didn’t want it to end.

Nothing about it seems like a kids movie, once you get past it being a stop motion film about animals. The running gag that the trailers have been pushing is a lot funnier in the movie. You’ll have to see the movie to find out what the cuss I’m talking about.

The human characters of Boggis, Bunce, and Bean were surprisingly funny and violent, Bean in particular. They smoke, they drink, and they ruin the self-esteem of their banjo-plucking relatives.

The look of this movie is great. It totally gives you the vibe of a retro 70s or 80s stop motion special from television. You see the hairs on the animals move around as the puppets are being animated frame-by-frame, and the digging sequences are delightfully low-tech, but it all adds to the mood of the film. I’ve been a pretty big Wes Anderson fan for a while, but I think Fantastic Mr. Fox is my favorite of his films since Rushmore.

I can’t recommend this movie enough, and I’m hoping to see it again sometime soon. Make sure to let me know in the comments section what you thought.

Oh, and just to keep with most other reviews of this movie: it’s fantastic.