Wes Anderson has been testing my patience lately. 'The Life Aquatic' was lifeless and quirky for the sake of it, the only real positive note was the Seu Jorge's covers of David Bowie in Spanish. Nothing really can be said for 'The Darjeeling Limited', it was a tedious and patrionising film that showed no growth in Wes Anderson as a filmmaker. The good feelings I had towards to Wes Anderson owing to the excellent 'Rushmore', the satisfying 'Royal Tenebaums', and the capable 'Bottle Rocket' were beginning to be strained.
I was to a point where I wasn't really interested in seeing a new Wes Anderson, it was only the news that he was adapting the classic Roald Dahl book 'Fantastic Mr. Fox' as a stop-motion animation that perked my interest and increased my worries. If Wes Anderson fucked up Roald Dahl it would have been over between him and me as filmmaker and audience member.
I was caught by surprise then by how much Wes Anderson did not fuck it up. In fact Wes Anderson seems to have molded very well with the book. It is clearly a Wes Anderson film with his typical attention to detail and eccentric touches but still the Roald Dahl story with strong characters and a clear sense of danger and adventure. It is a testament to Anderson that he did not overwhelm the story while widening the scope to suit cinema, and managed to stay so faithful to the book while having room to put his on his own touches. This cannot be said for many adaptations.
Wes Anderson even gets away with putting his normal recruit of actors (plus George Clooney and Meryl Streep) into the world of Mr. Fox and making it seem right. From the trailer I was concerned that the voices would prove distracting, especially Bill Murray as the Badger, in the film itself it is barely noticable (and one can mostly look the other way that this England-set story is populated by so many American accents).
Instead it was Wes Anderson's typical choices of vintage pop on the soundtrack that brought me out of the film and this may be one of the only areas where he took a mis-step. It may be a matter of taste but I don't really believe that 'The Beach Boys' has any real place in the world of Mr. Fox.
It can also be said for Wes Anderson's Mr. Fox is one of the better children's films of the last few years that recall those that died out sometime just after Jurassic Park. It is undoubtedly the inclusion of Roald Dahl, a writer who never spoke down to children. The themes are mature, exploring the wild beast in us all (see also: Where The Wild Things Are) and fatherhood (which proves ideal for Anderson). There is a sense of excitement here and that is owing to the very real dangers posed to our characters, including death and the loss of a tail.
The film seems to be arguing that Wes Anderson should give up live action for animation. His attention to detail suggests that he would like total control over a frame, the way the Fox hair moves in the film indicates an excruciating amount of work went into this film. Not only that but Anderson's has been writing increasingly cartoonish characters for sometime now. Anderson has proved his skill at stop-motion so why don't we encourage him to stay there?
