Fantastic Mr Fox
PG, Nationwide
Fantastic Mr Fox is actually no more than So-So Mr Fox, if that, and I was pretty bored right from the get-go. The animation is beautiful, the attention to detail is a thing of wonder — with enough mise-en-scènes to keep even the most fanatical mise-en-scène-ists happy — but the story is a mess, the script is banal and, as visually stunning as it all is, it just doesn’t seem to have any kind of soul. I don’t know what Roald Dahl, who wrote the original story, would say, but I’m betting it’s something along the lines of, ‘Clear off. I’m busy. Don’t come back.’ He was always quite grumpy, by all accounts, although you wouldn’t know it from this. You’d just think he was a sentimental old fool.
Directed by Wes Anderson (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums), who also adapted the story along with Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale), I can see it wouldn’t have worked without significant elaboration. Fantastic Mr Fox is one of Dahl’s slighter stories, and is simply about a family of foxes who enter into a war with three farmers — Boggis, Bunce and Bean — from whom they have been stealing chickens. The farmers band together and destroy their home, sending the fox family underground where they team up with other animals and formulate a plan to outsmart the three dastardly Bs once and for all. It is and always has been a morally confusing tale. If we are against the farmers because they want to kill the fox, why are we not against the fox who wants to kill chickens? But enough of all that, especially as I am no moral philosopher, except for on Tuesday mornings and then only if I have the time. (I also do the weekly supermarket shop on a Tuesday morning, so sometimes the moral philosophy has to take a backseat.)
A film does not have to be a slave to a book, but one hopes something of the spirit of a book remains, and here it simply doesn’t. It’s as if Mr Anderson took the spirit of the book, showed it the door, and instructed it never to show its face around these parts again. Here, the foxes are no longer just foxes that dig a lot. Here, they’re anthropomorphised to such an extent they stand on two feet, make their getaways on motorbikes, use mobiles, watch TV, are dressed up to the nines and also appear to be in regular employment. Mr Fox wears a raffish mustard-coloured suit and is now a newspaper columnist. Weird, I know. Meanwhile, Mrs Fox is, well, foxy, with her big blue eyes and smart yellow dresses. They have a young son, Ash, who thinks he is not good enough for his father but, of course, knows he is by the end. My, how one longs for Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker to roll up and sit on the whining little fellow. Mr Fox, by the way, is voiced by George Clooney and Mrs Fox is Meryl Streep, which I just don’t get at all. Why hire big-money names for this sort of thing? Kids don’t care and, as for adults, I have yet to hear one say, ‘I must go see that film. It has George Clooney’s voice in it.’ The voice of Wallace in Wallace & Gromit was by that old chap from Last of the Summer Wine — can’t even remember his name! — and it didn’t seem to do the box office any harm.
Look, all film is an illusion, but a good film-maker will get you to believe in it all the same. But it’s almost as if Mr Anderson has contempt for any proper context. The animals speak American but the farmers are British. How come? The animals have cookers and toasters and kettles in their dens. How come? It is obviously set in rural England yet the cars and supermarket products are all American. How come? It’s a film without any integrity, which means it can’t have any emotional credibility either. Do we properly care what happens to the fox family and their friends? Not at all. It’s as if too much thought has been given to the animation, and almost none to putting some heart into it.
The animation — which uses the stop-motion technique, like Wallace & Gromit — is terrific, like I said. Everything is bathed in the most delicious, autumnal light, you can see every hair on every animal, and there are some deliciously noirish scenes, but it’s not enough to stop this becoming yet another silly animal caper. There is some talk, in the script, about the animals still being ‘wild savages’, but, as we never see them actually being wild savages, this conflict is never brought to life. So, it’s So-So Mr Fox, and, although I still don’t know what Mr Dahl would say, I’m thinking it is now, ‘I’ve told you once and won’t tell you again. Just clear off.’ And that’s the Dahl we want, anyhow.
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