Are you cussing with me?
“Honey, I’m seven non-fox years old,” Mr. Fox (George Clooney) tells his wife as the camera pushes in on them sitting down to breakfast, “My father died at seven-and-a-half. I don’t want to live in a hole anymore. And I’m gonna do something about it.” Then, after a pregnant pause, he tears full force into his meal, arms flying and jaws snapping, with the voracity of, well, a wild animal. This early scene stands in for a remarkable whole; “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” adapted from Roald Dahl’s beloved book of the same name, succeeds by oscillating effortlessly between complicated, even adult concerns and downright fun. Not carefree enough to be shallow and not serious enough to be tiresome, Wes Anderson’s latest is a triumph of balance, at once enjoyable and meaningful.
The film opens in a similar fashion: Mr. Fox walks his wife (Meryl Streep) along a country road discussing her recent doctor’s visit. Satisfied with her explanation that the results were “just a bug” and unable to notice that she still preoccupied by it, he continues to chat, to comment on the landscape, and to overrule her opinions after asking for them. They arrive at a chicken farm and, after a brief squabble over strategy, they make a dash for the coop. This is the first of many scenes where Anderson plays with shifts in scale and perspective, lifted lovingly from Studio Ghibli, to produce beautifully rendered and engaging action. This lifestyle of danger and bravado that Mr. Fox enjoys comes to a screeching halt, however, when he learns that he and his wife are unexpectedly expecting.
With a child on the way, Mrs. Fox implores her husband to settle down and accept the responsibilities of fatherhood, a theme present in nearly every one of Anderson’s films. From “The Royal Tenenbaums” to “The Life Aquatic,” his films have been concerned largely with solipsistic men and the children they somewhat reluctantly raise. Offspring, for these men and this fox, represent the unfortunate sacrifice of oneself for the benefit of others. When Mr. Fox remarks “I used to steal birds, but now I’m a newspaperman,” there is a measure of defeat in his voice, a yearning, masked by his outward insouciance, for surrendered independence. He moves into a tree slightly out of his price range, despite unsavory human neighbors―Boggis Bunce, and Bean―and against the advice of his lawyer, Mr. Badger (Bill Murray). (Anderson’s wilderness is anything but wild; the animal world in “Fantastic Mr. Fox” exists within a kind of hyper-personification, with established societies, meticulously crafted furniture, and Anderson’s trademark sartorial flair.)
Faced with an unfulfilling literary career and heaps of vulpine ennui―“Who am I, Kylie? […] I’m saying this more as like, existentialism, you know?”―Mr. Fox plans a series of raids on his neighbors’ farms. These heists, carried out with bandit masks and carefully-scrutinized blueprints, increase in difficulty and in daring, drawing suspicion from the farmers and, more importantly, from Mrs. Fox. Meanwhile, their son Ash (voiced with a precise deadpan by Jason Scwhartzman) fears that in the battle for his father’s affection, he is losing out to his taller, more athletic cousin Kristofferson (Eric Chase Anderson), who is staying with the Foxes while his unseen father recovers from “double pneumonia.” As both Mr. Fox and his son grasp at forms of validation, they endanger everyone around them and force a climactic stand-off between man and animal.
From here, the film twists and turns through underground passages, hostage situations, and even death. The characters change and grow in significant ways by experiencing and overcoming obstacles, including interpersonal ones. Anderson, with co-writer Noah Baumbach (“The Squid and the Whale,” “Kicking and Screaming”), crafts a heartfelt fable, one that is able to maintain a reverence for its source material without idolizing it, embellishing upon rather than obscuring its meaning. The film has an endearing familiarity (due in equal parts to Dahl’s rich story and Anderson’s distinct way of telling it) while at the same time emerging as something completely new and different. In short, it is exactly what it needs to be.