Samantha Sincock
Arts Editor/Editorial Director
Wes Anderson’s “Fantastic Mr. Fox” has kept true to its title and is in fact quite the fantastic movie this fall, offering a stop-motion film of Roald Dahl’s tale of mischievous foxes, badgers and various other animals.
George Clooney and Meryl Streep voice the Foxes, the sophisticated Nick and Nora Charles of the vulpine world, and successfully bind the space between the worlds of adults and childhood.
The movie screams Anderson, reflecting the emotions and humor in his films “Bottle Rocket,” “The Royal Tenebaums,” “The Life Aquatic” and “The Darjeeling Limited.”
Clooney’s Mr. Fox is a former thief who plots one more hurrah against three men set out to ruin the family foxhole.
Tired of his newspaper job as a columnist that no one reads, Mr. Fox embarks on one last mission with an opossum Kylie (Wally Wolodarsky) and lawyer Badger (Bill Murray) for revenge against attacking farmers Bunce and Bean.
Although the star voice cast can be distracting at times, it adds an array of color and familiarity to the film.
“Fantastic Mr. Fox” teeters on the cliff of being a bit too long and overdone for some as a full-length stop-motion film. But the key star characters in the film and constant humor keep the theme grounded and the movie a success.
“I’m a wild animal and a husband and a father,” says Mr. Fox and it is this theme of the movie, which relates to the masses. We all are balancing this act of life with multiple roles in it; its nice to know a fox feels the same.
Samantha Sincock can be reached at samantha.sincock@laverne.edu.
