Fantastic Mr. Fox
Release Date:
November 13, 2009
Limited release
On the Big Board |
| Position |
Staff |
In Brief |
| 29/169 |
Max Braden |
This is a peculiarly quiet film. |
It's George Clooney's world. We're all just living in it.
In the month of November 2009 alone, he will have three movies that see theatrical release. Two of them, The Men Who Stare at Goats and Up in the Air, are your more traditional live-action fare roles for the actor. The other one is a singular stop-motion animated production from the director of such well-regarded, quirky fare as The Royal Tenenbaums and Rushmore.
Yes, Wes Anderson takes his strange blend of humor and particular attention to detail and lends it to a movie that will look different from everything he's done before. Rather than a movie that features the faces of the Anderson repertoire, including Bill Murray, Owen Wilson and Jason Schwartzman, it will instead feature the…voices of Bill Murray, Owen Wilson and Jason Schwartzman. Of course, Clooney is new to the mix, as he has the lead role of Mr. Fox. Other voice work is provided by Willem Dafoe, Adrien Brody and Michael Gambon (who both had previous roles in Anderson films), along with grande dame of cinema Meryl Streep and Brian Cox. Needless to say, the talent providing the voices in the film is stellar, with most of them having worked in the format previously.
The movie itself adapts a classic tale by Roald Dahl (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). The story pits farmers against a sly fox who just keeps on taking their chickens. When they band together to take him on, and this impacts both Mr. Fox's family and all of the woodland creatures who live in the same area.
As with most of Anderson's work, The Fantastic Mr. Fox is likely to be a love it or hate it proposition. It's likely to be too eccentric to work as a proper family film, and will have the animation stigma attached to it, precluding it from being a big draw for adults. The likely box office result for this one is that it will draw out fans of the director (myself included) and people curious about the adaptation of the book. It might be tough to get back the $30 million budget, but if it behaves like other Anderson films, it will be a slow grower anyway. (Kim Hollis/BOP)
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