FANTASTIC MR. FOX

Wes Anderson's quirky claymation comedy, "Fantastic Mr. Fox", starts right off the bat with its in-your-face and fast paced type of animation. After about 30 seconds of opening credits fast foxes and crazy animation are filling the screen every second. The film is about Mr. Fox (voiced by George Clooney), who tries to steal chickens and alcohol/cider from three of the meanest, ugliest farmers in, well, wherever the movie takes place. The farmers Bean, Boggis, and Bunce are about as bad as villains get and are all out to kill Mr. Fox and his family for stealing from them.

The animation in "Fantastic Mr. Fox" is absolutely stunning. The water in some of the sequences looks entirely real while everything else is animated. This provides an off-putting amount of realism into a clay world, and it works magically. The clay-animation really accentuates the foxes features. So much so in fact, that way-too-close-ups are used to show how well done they are. The set design is also quite ingenious, Anderson actually lets the sets look like miniatures and it creates a fairly-tale like quality to some of the scenes as well. Fire is also just yellow paper being blown up from underneath, this reveals a nice, not-too-dangerous feeling in the climax of the film. The balance between fairy-tale and realism is split almost fifty-fifty, so it is hard to get adjusted to each scene. Some of the action scenes also happen so fast that it is incredibly hard to tell what is going on at some points.

Anderson's directing is very well-executed, but his script leaves lots to be desired. The script, which is written by Anderson and Noah Baumbach based on Roald Dahl's novel, is all over the place and has no idea what to do or where to go. There is some compensation for this in the film though with incredible voice acting. Clooney, along with Meryl Streep (who plays his wife) and a spectacular Jason Schwartzmann (who plays their son Ash) lead on all-star, if underused, voice cast. Even the hilarious Schwartzmann cannot make-up for the script though.

Anderson seems to be relying too much on the ground-breaking animation to tell the story than the actual story, which there is almost none. Mr. Fox is incredibly unlikeable as well, it is hard to have sympathy for him during the entire film and he makes everyone around him suffer for his hobby of stealing from the farmers. The script is just not that funny either. The characters are constantly in life-or-death situations and there are not that many jokes. Every time that a character is supposed to curse in the film, they say "cuss" instead for, I guess, comedic purposes. This is just one of the many things that do not work in the movie, and they more they say it, the more ridiculous it sounds. Schwartzmann is the only hilarious part of the film, as everything he says is just knee-slappingly funny because his voice is perfect for the role.

The film also lacks a satisfactory ending. The climax seems to drag on forever with no great resolution at the end, and there is not a caring feeling as to if Mr. Fox "wins" or not. There are also unnecessary comments about Mr. Fox's phobia of wolves (the reason for his phobia is never explained) and this prompts a silly and unneeded scene with a real wolf and Mr. Fox.

The soundtrack is extraordinary though, featuring Beach Boys and Rolling Stones. Anderson shows signs of promise as well, his directing is very well done, but if he gets more defined script the next time around he can really do something special. As for now, you should still see it but the film is purely mediocre.

Verdict: WAIT FOR VIDEO

**.5/***** (2.5/5 stars)