“I understand what you’re saying and your advice is valuable, but I’m going to ignore you completely.”

This weekend the babe and I finally got the chance to see one on the films we’ve been waiting for since we first heard Wes Anderson was taking a crack at a Roald Dahl book (My favorite was “The Witches”).  Part of what seems to be an increasing number of children’s book adaptations from young and heavily stylized filmmakers, Wes’ Fantastic Mr. Fox takes us to the places that Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are only dreamed of (You can find my review for that film here).  While not as flashy as this year’s earlier stop motion wonder Coraline, it takes a decidedly retro approach to the style and what we get is less experiment and more a believable backdrop to the (a)typical Anderson quirkiness. Wes’ use of stop motion animation not only caters to every idiosyncrasy of his imagination, look no further than the badger mural in the picture above, but the dialogue,  the soundtrack and the pitch perfect family dysfunction in Mr. Fox are, well… Fantastic.

The movie is best described as a collection of meticulously designed scenes, each of them threatening to overwhelm the viewer but always in a way that is clever enough to push the story forward. In fact the reason the film is so good is this approach to filmmaking that Anderson pioneered with Rushmoore and played to hard in The Life Aquatic. What was a demanding and cluttered scene in live action becomes a beautifully crafted testament to his own handiwork and imagination, with many inside jokes along the way for those with a keen eye.  Though the trailers put me off on the idea of an entire feature length film in this retro-esque stop motion style, after the first ten minutes I had failed to notice it at all and by the end on the film I found it enjoyably quirky, which I guess was the point all along.

Like all “Andersonian” films this one takes place is it’s own exclusive world but one that brims with father/son angst, a search for significance and the highly nuanced neuroses that plague his characters.   At many times Mr. Fox feels like an animated version of The Royal Tenenbaums but what keeps it a from being a repackaged film is the perspective that Anderson frames it in. Whereas Tenenbaums was, very simply, a child’s interpretation of an adult story, the drama in Mr. Fox is an adult’s view into a children’s story which makes it so endearing.

Go see it, sit back and enjoy. I guarantee you will walk out with a smile.