Movie Musings: THE FANTASTIC MR. FOX

I’ve long grown tired of the quirky damaged characters that populate Wes Anderson films. What started out as fresh and interesting in the late 90s quickly grew stale and repetitive as the director would move through his obligatory checklist of ‘things that always need to be in my movie’. Which is admittedly pretty cool if one of those things always happens to be Bill Murray, but even Peter Venkman can only carry so much on his back.

However, with THE FANTASTIC MR. FOX apparently what was old is now new again. All the little directorly motifs that saturate Anderson’s live action work suddenly take on a new vibrancy when transferred to claymation. The mere act of transferring genre was enough to elevate the impact of Anderson’s standard bag o’ tricks to a whole new level.

Now whether or not that’s because audiences are willing to forgive an endless parade of wooden expressions on clay figurines, whereas those same expression worn by living actors can become awfully repetitive, who’s to say?

THE FANTASTIC MR.FOX is sweet, carefree and just plain old good movie making.