Fantastic Mr. Fox

Release Date: 11.23.09

Fantastic Mr. Fox's (center, voiced by George Clooney) accoutrement of choice: corduroy and a bandit hat

“Who am I?” a puzzled Mr. Fox asks his opossum friend in one of the best scenes in “Fantastic Mr. Fox.” It’s a question that ought to be asked now and again. Really, who is any of us? Why are we ourselves and not someone else? What is our purpose and why?

But Mr. Fox especially has a right to ask. In Wes Anderson’s stop-motion animated film, Fox (George Clooney) enjoys a life of adventure and risk, trespassing on local farms and plucking birds from their henhouses to fill his family’s dinner table. Chicken stealing is a part of fox survival, yes, but more than that, Fox is good at it. Crafty, agile and quick-witted, he’s a natural at the role he was born to play, and he thrives on his successes.

All that has to change, however, when Mrs. Fox (Meryl Streep) informs Fox that she is pregnant and implores him to find a safer line of work. We can see a dream die in Fox’s eyes, and Anderson takes us two years (12 fox years) into the future. The Foxes and their son Ash (Jason Schwartzman) are living in a cozy foxhole, supported by Fox’s new job as a newspaper columnist. We meet more animals who have also settled into modern professions. Badger is Fox’s attorney and voiced by Bill Murray, an Anderson favorite. Anderson playfully casts himself as Weasel, who is (appropriately) Fox’s real estate agent.

All ought to be going well, but Fox is dissatisfied with the life he’s found himself in. “How can a fox ever be happy without…a chicken in its teeth?” he ponders aloud to Kylie the opossum (Wallace Wolodarsky). Fox’s arrival at this crux pinpoints just how tragic his situation is: he knows what will make him happy, but he’s given it up for other ideals and may never experience it again. For many of us, the secret to our happiness is so elusive that we might envy Fox for his clarity and perception, and pity him all the more for being unable to act on it.

But of course, Fox does try to act on it, risking the lives of himself, Mrs. Fox, Ash and his nephew Kristoferson (Eric Chase Anderson) to hatch one last scheme, a triple theft targeting three local farmers. This is where the original plot from Roald Dahl’s book comes in; the backstory was written by Anderson to fill out the film. Dahl’s wonderfully quirky style, nothing short of fantastic itself, comes through in the description of each farmer, introduced by his physical size, what he eats and his level of meanness. The meanest of the three is Bean (Michael Gambon), a Cockney who shoots off Mr. Fox’s tail and wears it as a necktie.

Such details from Dahl show off his tremendous skill as a children’s writer and remind us of the story’s original purpose, the entertainment of young people. I say “remind us” because it’s not always clear that “Fantastic Mr. Fox” is a children’s film. Some of the action scenes will certainly capture children’s attention, but I’m not sure that the rest, which are more typical of Anderson’s style, will.

Although children and childhood feature prominently in many of his films, Anderson is decidedly an adult’s writer. His commentary is usually dark and more likely to resonate with those who have made it out of childhood (or are somewhere near the end of it). In the same spirit as “The Royal Tenenbaums,” “Fantastic Mr. Fox” plays with the theme of aloof, remote parents. When Ash complains that his father doesn’t recognize Ash’s athletic abilities, Fox asks what the “subtext” of Ash’s remark is.

Such a comment might find appreciation with adult viewers but will go totally unnoticed by most children. I suppose, though, that a fair number of movies loved by me as a child had their own dark commentary and subtexts that I didn’t pick up on until much older. Take “Mary Poppins,” for example. I think children are aware on some level that one of its themes is bad parenting, but all the singing and flying and the talking umbrella parrot can get very distracting.

There certainly are films that work for both adults and children, and “Fantastic Mr. Fox” may very well be one of them. I hope that children who are charmed by it now will revisit the film in the future, when they might see Fox’s struggle to come to terms with his role and identity through a different, more mature lens.