At The Pictures: Fantastic Mr Fox

Fantastic Mr Fox is a bit of an odd experience. It really is no different to anything else in Wes Anderson’s body of work – it just happens to also be about a family of foxes. The animation is slightly shonky on purpose; there’s a herky-jerkiness to the movements that gives it an old-fashioned vibe, but again that’s no different to any of his other films really is it? I like how he mixes the personalities of the animals, so one minute their sophisticated humanoid types and then the next they’re just being proper animals. The cast is brilliant. I particularly liked Jason Schwartzman as the sulky junior fox Ash, but in my eyes the show was stolen by Willem Dafoe’s knife-wielding slightly bonkers Cajun street punk Rat. Given the whimsical nature of Anderson’s work I wasn’t really sure how well it’d work as a children’s film, but I overheard some young’uns saying they liked it as I was leaving the theatre so I guess he did alright. And Jarvis Cocker sings a song in the middle of it! FANTASTIC!