For Wes Anderson’s first foray into stop-motion animation, he adapts Roald Dahl’s beloved story of The Fantastic Mr. Fox who, feeling stuck in his current life, plans a heist against three local farmers. The farmers seek revenge, and The Fantastic Mr. Fox must rely on his family and friends to fight back and claim their space.

Anderson finds a perfect form for his meticulous visual style, as usual finding dry comedy amidst a touching story of a family trying to figure each other out, learning their strengths, weaknesses, and how to rely on one another. With usual collaborators like co-writer Noah Baumbach, repertory players Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Willem Dafoe and Owen Wilson, and an infusion of star talent with leads George Clooney and Meryl Streep, Anderson’s hand-made delight is a technical marvel, and a heartwarming modern family classic. Whistle click. 

“The soundtrack contains tunes from the Beach Boys and the Rolling Stones, but also Burl Ives, Mozart, and “Ol’ Man River” — disjunctive, but then the whole movie is disjunctive, like the cultural bric-a-brac in Anderson’s teeming brain. You’ll find your eyes roaming the frames and laughing at the flourishes and textures, at symmetry that’s slightly unbalanced so the screen is a seesaw. There are gags so ingenious they’d have made Bugs Bunny director Chuck Jones gasp.” ~ David Edelstein, NPR

Screening 11/25 + 11/27

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