Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
Directed by Wes Anderson
The Fantastic Mr. Fox, bored with his current life, plans a heist against the three local farmers. The farmers, tired of sharing their chickens with the sly fox, seek revenge against him and his family.
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24 films that influenced Fantastic Mr. Fox
What critics say influenced Fantastic Mr. Fox
While many of the movies made of his work - The Witches, Matilda, Willy Wonka/Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - have been well received fan favorites, few have capture the underlying mischievousness of his motives…until now.
Roald Dahl's writing for children has only a moderate record of reaching the screen with its naughtiness intact - a pair of not-bad stabs at Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a middling Matilda and Nicolas Roeg's paralysingly scary take on The Witches are among near-successes to date.
This has been the case with Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (although not necessarily the Tim Burton re-telling of the story), James and the Giant Peach , and Matilda.
Opening in theaters Wednesday, "The Fantastic Mr. Fox," based on the book by Roald Dahl, is a puckish and charming stop-motion-animated film in the tradition of "Wallace & Gromit," "James and the Giant Peach" and "Chicken Run."
Dahl also wrote “James and the Giant Peach” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, two children’s stories adapted for the screen.
Emerging from the divine mind of author Roald Dahl (“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “James and the Giant Peach”), “Fantastic Mr. Fox” offers Anderson a hefty slice of whimsy to work with.
Visually and conceptually, Fantastic Mr. Fox doesnt remotely resemble anything Wes Anderson has tackled before: Its a manic kids movie, its stop-motion animated, and its his first film based on an outside sourcea minor story by Charlie And The Chocolate Factory author Roald Dahl.
The author of such eccentric stuff as "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," "Witches" and "Matilda" would have appreciated its oddball tone, as well as its mixing in of darkness, even brutality, in a children's story.
Dahl also wrote “James and the Giant Peach” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, two children’s stories adapted for the screen.
Although it's adapted from a fable by Roald Dahl ("Charlie and the Chocolate Factory"), this animated marvel is unmistakably a Wes Anderson film.
Dahl's original is delightful, but it's merely a sketch of a tale when compared to his other, more well-known books ("Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, " "James and the Giant Peach, " "Witches").
Hearing these familiar voices issuing from the bristling, bustling animal forms is one of the daft pleasures of “Fantastic Mr. Fox,’’ which at times feels closer to Kenneth Grahame’s beloved “The Wind in the Willows’’ than Dahl.
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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."
A far cry from the smooth lines of The Nightmare Before Christmas and its ilk, this is animation in the style of those early 1980s Christmas programs, in which half the fun is watching characters move in a herky-jerky fashion with their lips not even making an attempt to match the words.
Director/writer Wes Anderson’s adaptation (with an assist from Noah Baumbach on the screenplay) of Roald Dahl’s, er, tale, of a naturally-thieving fox who tries to go straight is a visual delight that doesn’t dig too deep into the allegorical subtext that made George Orwell’s Animal Farm such a brilliant piece of fiction.
Hearing these familiar voices issuing from the bristling, bustling animal forms is one of the daft pleasures of “Fantastic Mr. Fox,’’ which at times feels closer to Kenneth Grahame’s beloved “The Wind in the Willows’’ than Dahl.
While many of the movies made of his work - The Witches, Matilda, Willy Wonka/Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - have been well received fan favorites, few have capture the underlying mischievousness of his motives…until now.
Roald Dahl's writing for children has only a moderate record of reaching the screen with its naughtiness intact - a pair of not-bad stabs at Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a middling Matilda and Nicolas Roeg's paralysingly scary take on The Witches are among near-successes to date.
I'd place this alongside Matilda as a motion picture that "gets" the book and transforms its essence to the screen.
The author of such eccentric stuff as "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," "Witches" and "Matilda" would have appreciated its oddball tone, as well as its mixing in of darkness, even brutality, in a children's story.
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Did you know he wrote the screenplay for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?
Anderson and co-writer Noah Baumbach’s adaptation of Fantastic Mr. Fox, Roald Dahl’s 1970 children’s novella, begins by paying homage to nearly every Disney children’s book adaptation from Snow White to The Jungle Book to Robin Hood: a stop-motion animated book opens, reminding us to respect the written word behind the story to come.