The Fantastic Mr. Fox

Those of you who are fans of the Cartoon Network show 'Robot Chicken' are probably familiar with the stop-motion technique of animation. What stop-motion does in animation is that it takes a physically manipulated object, and makes it appear as if it is moving on it's own. The object is moved slowly in a frame-by-frame sequence, giving it the illusion that the object is actually moving by itself. Clay figures are usually used to do this, because they can be easily repositioned. So why am I telling you all of this? Because 'The Fantastic Mr. Fox' is one hundred percent stop-motion animation. The difference between this film and most of it's kind is that they used animals, not just clay figures. I seriously thought this was a joke when I saw the trailer for the first time, but the more I read up on it, the more amazed I was at the process. Then, after sitting through a brief 87 minutes of this new animation, I was astounded. It was awesome.


Lead by Academy Award winners George Clooney and Meryl Streep, 'The Fantastic Mr. Fox' is about battle between good and evil, good being represented by Mr. Fox and company, and bad being represented by the three bad farmers: Boggis, Bunce, and Bean. It starts with Felicity (Mrs. Fox) telling her husband that she is pregnant and wants them to stop robbing farmers of their produce and instead get real jobs. When Mr. Fox realizes that he doesn't have a whole lot of 'fox years' left, he makes a bold move and moves into a house in a tree. This is not a wise move according to his lawyer, Badger (Bill Murray), because it is right across the field from the three farmers' respective houses. Two years go by and nothing really is keeping Fox's interest anymore, so he decides to go and rob each of the farmer's house of produce, whether it be duck, chicken, or alocholic cider. Once the farmers find out what Fox has done, they plan an attack on him. Their first attempt fails, but it sends the message. Now Fox and his family are stuck, with nowhere really to go. The following sequence of events all work well together and turn out to make a pretty watchable wild goose chase.


This movie may be a little rough on the eyes, because of the choppiness of stop-motion, but it's so revolutionary that it didn't even matter. I personally would never expect to see a movie made like this because it seems like such a foolish way to be shot, but I was wrong. It's incredible. This adaptation of the popular children's book of the same name is a crowd-pleaser; child, teen, or adult. There's something to be said about how different people's visions can be when they make a movie, but when it is this enjoyable, it doesn't really matter how you make it.


Rating: 3 out of 4 stars
Trailer:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2igjYFojUo