The Fantastic Mr. Fox

So it has come to this. Wes Anderson's meticulously staged camera set-ups, whimsically detailed sets, and lush autumnal colors have found their natural expression: a stop motion animated adaption of a Roald Dahl children's book. The results are interesting, if mixed, in that the switch to animation is a natural fit for Anderson's aesthetic, while also undermining some of the emotional elements that makes his best work so memorable. Fantastic Mr. Fox feels like Anderson reaching a crossroads: from here, he'll either move on to a more expansive, penetrating cinematic palette, or continue to construct his delicate and increasingly sterile family dioramas.

If animation is in some ways Wes Anderson's perfect medium, then stop motion animation is even more perfect. The charming, hand-crafted feel of Mr. Fox makes the movie feel like something Max Fischer would have put together in middle school. Intricate set and character design, complete with animal hair that moves with the wind, offer the ultimate expression of Anderson's intensely composed film vision. It always felt like those pesky humans actors and were the thing standing between Wes Anderson and the movies he really wanted to make. Using animal puppets also does the work of justifying a visual fussiness that can feel artificial and lifeless when applied to actual people. In Mr. Fox, cross-sections of farmhouses and whimsical, choreographed heist scenes feel perfectly natural. It's easy to look back at the Wes Anderson filmography and imagine all of his previous characters as claymation figures bouncing around in Technicolor. 111 Archer Avenue is basically a giant dollhouse to being with.

And yet...while the animation makes Anderson's more contrived visual motifs easier to accept, it also ensures that the film can't reach the sort of emotional heights that Anderson, at his best, is capable of. The story is children's-book simple: Mr. Fox (George Clooney, reprising Danny Ocean for the woodland set) gives ups stealing chickens when his wife (Meryl Streep) gets pregnant, but a few years later, the itch comes back, leading to an escalating battle with three sinister farmers who live near Fox's treehouse. Along the way, Mr. Fox bonds with his alienated son (Jason Schwartzman) and comes to terms with his responsibilities as a husband and father. The character interplay echoes one of the themes that have dominated all of Anderson's work: overbearing father figures and the disaffected children left in their wake, but the emotional beats and dialogue are played so broadly that they fail to register with the poignancy of movies like Rushmore and Royal Tenenbaums. That's to be expected when dealing with what is ostensibly a kid's movie, but the overdetermined nature of the character arcs call to mind Anderson's last live-action film, The Darjeeling Limited. This suggests that Anderson has told all the stories of upper class family discord he can, and that it's time to move on. That, or he can simply occupy himself with finding new ways to control every centimeter of every frame of his hermetically sealed entertainments.