Treat Yourself to the Warmth of FANTASTIC MR. FOX

Here we are, deep in the throes of fall, winter ready to set upon us. Well, here in Texas, we’ve just hit average late summer temperatures compared to everywhere else. Regardless, this time of year with its asshole to elbow foot and car traffic, being thrown headfirst into family that you haven’t seen in years, (depending on the location) biting temperatures, AND seasonal depression, requires some specific viewing selections.

Sure, you could keep up a normal watch schedule and there’s no correct movie to watch at any time of year BUT, I would like to posit that this season necessitates a certain warmth in your film choices and no one brings warmth like Wes Anderson. Specifically, with his stop-motion masterwork and one of my personal favorites: Fantastic Mr. Fox.

If you’re a fan of either anime or Western animation, you’ll immediately understand that anything under the animated medium can appeal to any age group, art is art after all, right? Well, a whole lot of viewers here in the states disagree, believing that animation is for children and children’s media only. Fantastic Mr. Fox forces anyone with that opinion to punt it out the window by giving us, quip filled, witty banter, and genuine, fully realized characters, on top of the buttery smooth animation, all wrapped up in Mr. Anderson’s signature filmmaking charm. But, no matter what technical filmmaking praises I can give this movie, there’s still one thing that I can’t ignore and that thing is this film’s greatest strength: its warmth. Stay with me here, an article can never fully convey how this movie makes me feel but please, allow me to try.

When you watch this film, it uses my aforementioned compliments to wrap you up with a warm blanket fresh out of the dryer. I’m not going to fully dive into color theory but, from second one this film affronts you with a barrage of the same tones that are spit out by a yuletide hearth. So, once you nestle in for this charming journey into Mr. Fox Land, you are preconditioned into a sense of friendly warmth so that when the masterful dialogue and impeccable voice acting work their magic, you’re fully engrossed and reassured that no matter how dire the straits get, that we’re all going to be okay. Not to say that this film has no stakes, because you’re in for a ride when you pop this bad boy in, but it’s never enough to jar you out of your nice, little, Wes Anderson visual blankey. I can’t stress enough that watching the moving magic of Fantastic Mr. Fox is like drinking some of Mr. Beans hot, juicy, cider.

On the topic of the decrypted, Michael Gambon voiced, Franklin Bean, he is a part of two sequences of stop-motion animation that only have been topped by Wes Anderson himself in his 2018 Isle of Dogs! (I recognize Mr. Anderson did not himself physically put together the sushi preparation sequence, but you get my point.) A fireside singalong of “Fantastic Mr. Fox” or Petey’s Song is animated with such joyous movement that every time I watch it, I wish I was there blowin’ on a jug to keep time with ’em. Petey’s banjo strings strum and bend with his furious fingers, the fellow farmhands around the fire sway and stomp to the rhythm, and Bean’s interruption and verbal slam brings everything to such a hilarious halt that you can’t even be upset that the song is over.

Bean himself absolutely loses it inside his operations trailer, tearing the entire interior apart at the seams, all in beautiful stop motion. Gone are the days of jerky Christmas special stop motion, this is the birth of the stop-motion renaissance that is still going strong with the aforementioned Isle of Dogs and the beautiful Kubo and the Two Strings! I seriously can’t give enough credit to this animation team. They’re so good that the look of this movie has convinced most people that it is “just a kids’ movie.”

Speaking of “kid’s movies,” you’re usually least looking forward to the writing of those right? And since the visuals are so stellar the script probably fell by the wayside, right? WRONG. The dialogue of Fantastic Mr. Fox should be talked about among the greats. Sure, there’s the gangster soliloquies of Pulp Fiction, the tension-packed litigations of The Social Network, and the legendary shouting matches of Glengarry Glenn Ross, but Anderson and Noah Baumbach’s script for Fantastic Mr. Fox both revels in its animal characters and entrances you to forget that this genre is supposed to be exclusively for children. It perfectly uses the fact that it is a family film script to just plop you right into the bustling world of walking, talking, paperwork conducting, column writing, anthropomorphic animals.

No needless exposition on why there are talking animals and humans living on the same planet, because it’s not important! What is important is the way that these characters talk to each other. Fox and Badger give each other verbal jabs and carry conversation that only close friends of years can believably deliver. Hell, they even get to a boiling point in an argument, jump out of their seats, literally snarl around at each other, cool off, sit back down, and end the conversation on a light note, just like real friends do. Don’t deny it. Okay fine, you didn’t literally snarl like an animal but, you probably had a spat with your best bud about The Mandalorian last week, but they’re still your best bud.

Mr. and Mrs. Fox treat each other with a level of compassion and understanding that you expect of genuine life partners, even in their scuffles. Offering the perfect foil to our animal protagonists, the human Boggis, Bunce, and Bean all speak in short commands more than sentences. Never giving each other enough information or conversation to ever comfortably carry on with each other ... just like real crotchety old men do!

I intentionally left out the outright plot of the movie because, if you’ve seen the movie you know how spectacularly it moves, and if you haven’t I’m not going to spoil it for you. I could just gush day, but rather than keeping you here, I’ll leave you with this. In a season where it can feel like everyone is asking everything of you, Fantastic Mr. Fox just wants to guide you hand in hand through its runtime. Fantastic Mr. Fox tells you that it’s more than okay to be different, to be YOU. And that that you is beautiful, and I think that’s something that you should keep in your heart year-round. Stay warm and stay safe out there.