The Fantastic Mr. Fox

Growing up in England, there were three things I feared: baked beans, dental plaque and grown ups. Fortunately, I had the magic of Roald Dahl to help me counter the horrid food and terrifying teachers. Now, with his animated adaptation of Dahl’s classic, Fantastic Mr. Fox, director Wes Anderson pays homage to this childhood hero by reviving one of his most memorable rebels.

Fantastic Mr. Fox (voiced by the fantastic George Clooney) makes his living stealing birds from repulsive farmers Boggis, Bunce and Bean, “one short, one fat, one lean.” One day his wife (Meryl Streep) accompanies him on a job and, after the two are caught in a trap, she swears that if they get out alive he must find a new line of work. Two years later, Mr. Fox lives the risk-free life of a newspaper columnist (?!). However, fed up with the humdrum of his burrow, he insists on moving his family into a roomier abode above ground. Once there, he immediately falls back into chicken stealing, and rekindles the wrath of the farmers, who set out to kill their robber once and for all.

Anderson returns to the screen with the distinctive dry humor, expressive color palette and folk/rock soundtrack that have set his films apart since Bottle Rocket. He teams up with screenwriter Noah Baumbach for the second time since The Life Aquatic, and they produce a delightfully embellished take on the original tale. Employing the laborious technique of stop-motion, Anderson transforms Dahl’s story into a patchwork world inhabited by hand-made figurines who look more like our playthings than the real thing, yet still manage to capture our hearts.

As Mr. Fox continually informs us throughout the film, it’s the wild animals that make this life fantastic, and as a former Brit I’m grateful Dahl and Anderson are two of them.