Unmistakably the work of the exacting, eccentric mind behind Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, and The Darjeeling Limited, Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox is a joy from beginning to end. Opening with a shot of Mr. Fox on a hill beneath a great tree, listening to "The Ballad of Davy Crockett" on his Walk Sonic (the Walkman of the fox world) as he waits for his lovely wife to appear, the film ranges over a wide swath of English farmland and country villages. Its hero is voiced by George Clooney - a fitting choice, because, like the star's Danny Ocean, "Foxy" is a bit of a bounder, a restless soul that needs a caper, a heist, to let him know he's alive. It's in his blood.
In fact, the voice work is universally stellar: Meryl Streep as Mrs. Fox, a patient (to a point) and perceptive spouse who speaks her mind and paints striking, though troubling, landscapes; Jason Schwartzman as Ash, the Foxes' sulky son; Eric Anderson (Wes' brother) as the visiting cousin, Kristofferson, whose athleticism and good looks pose a threat to Ash. And Bill Murray, as Badger, a financial adviser, getting into a "cussin' " match with Fox over the viability of a piece of real estate.
Fantastic Mr. Fox presents a sublime example of what can be done with this painstaking, old-school form of animation (the same technique that brought the original King Kong to life, and that keeps the British duo Wallace and Gromit going). The beautiful anthropomorphic animal puppets - and a trio of menacing human puppets, too (Fox's arch-enemies, the farmers Boggis, Bunce, and Bean) - inhabit a whimsical diorama of old-fashioned cars, motorbikes, and domestic accoutrements. The film has a three-dimensional quality, a sense of movement and depth, that's at once wholly artificial and wholly inviting.
