It’s more Wes Anderson than Roald Dahl, but there’s plenty for kids and adults to dig in “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” a gorgeous and witty piece of stop-motion animation from the classic children’s book.
For his best film since “The Royal Tenenbaums,” Anderson has cleverly cast a self-mocking George Clooney as the voice of the corduroy-clad Mr. Fox, who reluctantly gives up stealing livestock at the urging of his pregnant wife (Meryl Streep).
Twelve years later, he’s a newspaper reporter. But when the family — which includes their angst-ridden teenage son Ash (Jason Schwartzman) — moves to a new home in a tree, the old urges return.
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A series of “Ocean’s Eleven”-style raids on his human neighbors’ farms triggers an escalating war waged by their furious owners, led by the cadaverous Mr. Bean (Michael Gambon).
Mr. Fox — who memorably gets his tail shot off in one scene — must rise to the occasion and save an animal kingdom that includes his lawyer Badger (Bill Murray) and his sidekick Kylie (Wally Wolodarsky).
Anderson’s pal Spike Jonze recently failed with another children’s classic, “Where the Wild Things Are,” by being too faithful to the original, which was too slight for a feature-length film. But Anderson (and co-screenwriter Noah Baumbach) feels free to add character and subplots to Dahl, making the story his own.
Most obviously, Anderson introduces his familiar brand of family angst, including tensions between Mr. and Mrs. Fox that are unusually dark for a family film.
The klutzy and whiny Ash, who wears a cape, feels rejected by his dashing dad, who begins to regard his more athletic visiting nephew Kristofferson (Eric Anderson, the director’s brother) as his true heir in skullduggery.
The beautifully colored and designed animation, crammed with brilliant sight gags and supervised by Mark Gustafson, is the most wondrous of its kind since Tim Burton’s “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” (That film’s animation director, Henry Selick, was slated to work on “Mr. Fox” but instead did “Coraline,” which is a delight of its own.)
In his last couple of films (especially “The Darjeeling Limited”), Anderson’s curatorial, self-indulgent and control-freakish style seemed to be suffocating his actors.
But the director’s approach turns out to be wonderfully suited to animation, where he offers a painstakingly detailed version of ’60s England and an eclectic soundtrack that includes everything from “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” to “Old Man River.”
“Fantastic Mr. Fox” is a retro marvel that should delight today’s audience.