Fantastic Mr. Fox

Wes Anderson applies his deceptively simple visual style to stop-motion animation in this funny and wistful adaptation of the Roald Dahl classic. Adaptations veer between the tenuous and the verbatim, with Anderson and Noah Baumbach’s script landing somewhere in the middle. True to childhood memory, Mr. Fox is a family man, fantastic indeed, stealing produce liberally from three classic Dahl creations, mean-spirited farmers Boggis, Bunce, and Bean; and the plot itself is largely intact. Around the edges, though, Anderson shows his ‘Royal Tenenbaums’ sense of whimsy and peculiar American Englishness: the fox is voiced by George Clooney, for starters, and a midlife crisis and yearning for the ‘wild life’ underpin his harebrained schemes; we are treated to a teen film-like subplot following his son’s quest for maturity; and delightful visual flourishes adorn every frame. Even an audience that knows what’s coming is kept on its toes by a sharp script, unexpected twists, and an underlying feeling of joyful abandon‘¦ fantastic, and then some!