The Fantastic Mr Fox

...I decided to go to the cinema and watch Fantastic Mr Fox . Having been a fan of Roald Dahl as a child, I was very keen to see how the film turned out - although to be very honest I think I'd forgotten a lot of the book .

The story is about Mr Fox (George Clooney), a dab hand at stealing chickens . However, when his wife (Meryl Streep) announces that she is pregnant, just after the two of them are caught in a fox trap, he vows that if ...
...family from their home in the ground to a large spacious treehouse . Even this life of luxury is not enough for him, and he longs to return to his wild animal days of chicken stealing - and with his friend Kylie , he launches a plan to steal food from the three farms nearbby, owned by Boggis, Bunce and Bean . Although he manages to successfully steal food, the farmers become aware of this and decide there is only one course of action, to team up ... more

* Please note there is one instance of swearing in this review. I feel it is necessary in order illustrate a particular point*

With today being rather wet and rainy, my boyfriend, my daughter and I decided to go to the cinema and watch Fantastic Mr Fox . Having been a fan of Roald Dahl as a child, I was very keen to see how the film turned out - although to be very honest I think I'd forgotten a lot of the book .

The story is about Mr Fox (George Clooney), a dab hand at stealing chickens . However, when his wife (Meryl Streep) announces that she is pregnant, just after the two of them are caught in a fox trap, he vows that if they survive the night, he'll give up his chicken stealing career in favour of something a little safer.

Fast forward 12 years, and Mr Fox is a newspaper journalist. However, he's not happy with his life, he feels poor, and although his wife assures him that despite being poor they are happy, he decides to move his family from their home in the ground to a large spacious treehouse . Even this life of luxury is not enough for him, and he longs to return to his wild animal days of chicken stealing - and with his friend Kylie , he launches a plan to steal food from the three farms nearbby, owned by Boggis, Bunce and Bean . Although he manages to successfully steal food, the farmers become aware of this and decide there is only one course of action, to team up and get rid of the thieving fox .

Can Mr Fox elude the farmers, yet keep feeding his family? Will his wife forgive his deception? And will his son, so desperate to be like his dad, be able to prove himself.

Personally, I didn't much enjoy the film. It set an uncomfortable tone right from the start, with a scene between Fox and Badger turning into an argument which descends into what, for all intents and purposes is a swearing match - with the word cuss or cussing being substituted for the word fuck (pardon my french!)

It is all too obvious what the word is they are replacing , given the concept and the tone of the arguments . Words like 'Clustercuss' 'Cussed' 'Cuss' and 'Cussing are used, not just in this one scene, but repeatedly throughout the film . It doesn't matter that they weren't actually saying the F word, that was what I, my boyfriend and (and judging from overheard comments in the foyer afterwards) every other adult was hearing .

Lets move on from that, my biggest bugbear . My second huge gripe is just how American the whole thing is - right down to the story actually being set in America, almost everyone having an American accent , and the inclusion of a completely new character, Kylie the Opossum, a creature not generally native to British shove.

The scripting I'm again not particularly pleased with. I just didn't feel like I bonded with any of the characters, or that I cared about them remotely, due to just not getting enough time looking into each of their minds. A rat pops up as a baddy at one point who implies that he has some kind of shared past history with Mr Fox, but this is never satisfactorily explained, and that just left me frustrated and annoyed .

The casting is, I suppose tolerable - it really is hard to say with such a week undetailed script - I'll give Meryl Streep credit and say that for an old bird, she does indeed sound foxy as Mrs Fox, and George Clooney does a pretty good job as the ever so slightly arrogant Mr Fox. Michael Gambon was, unusually, a disappointment in this , adopting some kind of strange posh yet cockney accent that just frustrated me .

The animation style was refreshing . Note that I say refreshing - not good . It does make a change to see a children's film that isn't CGI. This film instead employed a stop-motion technique, which gave it a little bit of charm, but strangely, it seemed as though they were almost trying to make the film look older than it was ... several scenes were clunky in their movement, almost like watching an old chaplin film, and the scenes where Fox and his family were dancing reminded me of nothing so much as the Cravendale Milk adverts .

Every change of scene was accompanied by a bright orange heading at the top of the screen of (I assume) the name of the chapter in the original book . This made it look really cheap and 70'S, and made me think of the old sex education videos we used to watch in school, where a change of subject would be marked with a title flashing on the screen - penetration perhaps, or pregnancy.

My daughter enjoyed this film - she's six, and she hasn't read or had the book read to her to make comparisons. She did pick up on the mock swearing element , she asked me if the word Cuss was a naughty word, so she clearly picked up on the context . But, for myself, I can't rate this film well - it's a film that instead of simply being a childrens film based on a great story, is trying to make itself more adult than it ought to be, and trying to hard to be quirky and original . Sadly, it fell flat - the jokes missed, the style seemed dated, and the characters ? Well, I really couldn't give a cuss!

1 star - purely for the fact that my daughter enjoyed it .  

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