Fantastic Mr. Fox Blu-ray delivers stunning video and great audio in this excellent Blu-ray release
Mr. and Mrs. Fox live an idyllic home life with their son Ash and visiting young nephew Kristopherson. But after
12 years, the bucolic existence proves too much for Mr Fox's wild animal instincts. Soon he slips back into his
old ways as a sneaky chicken thief and in doing so, endangers not only his beloved family, but the whole animal
community. Trapped underground and with not enough food to go around, the animals band together to fight
against the evil Farmers -- Boggis, Bunce and Bean -- who are determined to capture the audacious, fantastic
Mr. Fox at any cost.
For Spike Jonze and Wes Anderson, America's premiere wunderkind auteurs, 2009 was the year
of the inner child. Both brought children's lit classics to the screen, Jonze turning Maurice
Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are into an emotional voyage through the darker waters
of childhood consciousness, and Anderson putting his indelible stamp—a Modern Library
literariness, studied cinematic reflexivity, and impossibly hip music—onto Roald Dahl's
Fantastic Mr. Fox. Despite the big furry monsters of Wild Things and the creaky
stop-motion animation of Fantastic, neither film is that much of a stylistic departure for
the idiosyncratic directors. Anderson's films, in particular, have always strained for a kind of
storybook quality, creating worlds that are ever so slightly off from the one we inhabit, worlds
where conversations are always drolly intelligent, fathers absent and children precocious, where a
naturalist's ship might suddenly appear in cross-section, like an illustration, where a train might
get lost on a track in the desert, and where a young, beret-wearing dramatist can stage a high
school play about Vietnam, complete with massive explosions. Based on an actual
storybook and shot with a fusty stop-motion aesthetic that's a welcome change from the usual
CGI kid-flick glossiness, Fantastic Mr. Fox allows Mr. Anderson to indulge his visual and
thematic peculiarities in a way that seems much less affected. Critics have overused the titular F-
word to describe the film, so I'll stick with another F-adjective: fun.
The fantastic Mr. Fox...
Anderson and fellow writer Noah Baumbach—director of The Squid and the Whale—have
expanded upon Roald Dahl's comparatively slim volume by bookending it with sections of their
own creation and filling out the story with Anderson's usual father/son, husband/wife familial
drama. Mr. Fox (George Clooney) is a newspaperman and erstwhile chicken thief who promises to
give up the dangers of the coop-cracking life when he learns that his wife, Felicity (Meryl Streep),
is with cub. Twelve (fox) years later, their surly, painfully awkward adolescent son, Ash (Jason
Schwartzman), competes for his father's attention with his cousin Kristofferson Silverfox (Eric
Chase Anderson), the sort of kid who can high dive, swing a bat, and hum a mantra with equal
agility. Against the advice of his badger lawyer (Bill Murray), Mr. Fox moves his family into a tree
house from which he can see the farms of Boggis, Bunce, and Bean (Michael Gambon), three ill-
tempered poultry raisers—one fat, one short, one lean—who don't take kindly to woodland
creatures. Soon enough, Mr. Fox is back to his hutch-robbing antics, recruiting the help of Kylie
Opossum (Wallace Wolodarsky) and the ultra-talented Kristofferson, much to Ash's chagrin. The
three farmers go to literally explosive lengths to get revenge, but meanwhile the Fox family is
dealing with its own internal blowup, as Felicity begrudges her husband's broken promise, and
poor Ash, "too little and uncoordinated," just wants to live up to his father's
expectations.
The voice acting is top notch, filled with life and character. Since the film is, in one sense, a very
Ocean's 11-style caper, George Clooney seems perfectly cast as Mr. Fox, playing him as a
man…sorry, a fox of both action and sophistication, a kind of latter-day mammalian Cary Grant.
Meryl Streep, who sometimes sounds conspicuously like Anderson mainstay Angela Houston, is
preternaturally wise as hip mama fox Felicity—painting landscapes crisscrossed with lightning
bolts—and Schwartzman is by turns scrappy and peeved, dejected and determined. The
surrounding oddballs and grumps are cast with Anderson's usual specificity. Though Michael
Gambon is deliriously wicked as mean old Franklin Bean, and Owen Wilson turns up briefly to
coach Whack-Bat—a parody of cricket's incomprehensible rules—the best bit part goes to Willem
Defoe as a seedy-looking security rat who wields a switchblade and snaps his fingers like a
Westside Story gang member. One wonders if it was fate or merely coincidence that in
2009, Mr. Defoe was cast in two movies that feature talking foxes, this one and Lars Von Trier's
Antichrist, which is most definitely not a kid-friendly film.
Like Where the Wild Things Are, Fantastic Mr. Fox seems primed more for wistful
adults, nostalgic for a childhood spent under the covers with a book and a flashlight, than children
who are just learning how to read. The film's russet and gold color palette practically smells of old
paperbacks, its arts 'n' crafts sets and handmade, fur-covered creations are reminiscent of the
dioramas you made for elementary school book reports. (Except mine were always made of Lego
characters and clay, inside a shoebox with one side cut out.) Essentially, it's like taxidermy come
to herky-jerky life, with bristling hair, porcelain eyes, and the most detailed dollhouse dress-up
clothes imaginable. There are enough antics to keep most kids interested—break-ins and bust-
outs, battles pitting gun-toting humans against small mammals tossing flaming pinecone
grenades—but it's the parents in the audience who will wear wry smiles after catching the jokes
that fly right over the heads of the youngsters. Anderson's characters nearly always speak in
arch, quasi-literary language, like castoffs from some abandoned Salinger novel, and the tone is
kept just as crackling here, with dry as kindling dialogue that sparks into flame for a few good
laughs. (See the repeated use of the word "cuss" in place of actual "cuss" words, as in, "Like cuss
you will," or, "This is going to be a total cluster-cuss for everybody.")
Along with all the wisecracks and woodland shenanigans, Fantastic Mr. Fox carries some
weighty and emotionally complex themes, especially considering the vapidity of most purported
children's entertainment. Mr. Fox goes through what amounts to a mid-life crisis and the Mrs.
seems on the verge of filling for divorce. One character even redeems himself in death, to which
another replies, "Redemption, sure, but in the end he's just another dead rat in a garbage pail
behind a Chinese restaurant." That's some cruel existentialism for a kid's movie, but if I think
back to the books and films that influenced me most as a child, I was always drawn to the ones
that seemed right on the hazy border of my ability to understand them. And I'm sure that's true
for most kids, who are always testing the boundaries of the unknown. Though the fantastic fox of
the title is Clooney's bird-thief, we're meant to identify most with his son Ash, a character to
which adults and littler people can both relate. Individuality, the acceptance of being different, the
inherent tension and awkwardness of father/son relationships—it's all standard-issue Wes
Anderson stuff, but in the carefully manufactured world of Fantastic Mr. Fox it feels
newer and truer somehow. Who'd have imagined the director's penchant for stagy, storybook
artifice would be most purely distilled in a stop-motion Roald Dahl adaptation?
In three words, very nearly perfect. You'd have to be grumpier than Boggis, Bunce, and Bean
combined to nitpick about Fantastic Mr. Fox's faithful 1080p/AVC-encoded presentation.
Shot with Nikon D3 digital still cameras and given a digital-to-digital transfer—which seems
strange to say considering how analog the characters and sets look—Fox is a
thing of handmade beauty on Blu-ray. The source is pristine and very nearly noiseless, the
product of shooting with controlled lighting using arguably one of the best full-frame DSLRs on
the market. The lenses are where the image quality really comes from, though, and the Nikon
and Cooke glass used here results in an ultra-crisp picture that not only impresses on its own
merits, but also makes you stop and marvel at the incredibly intricate work of the puppet makers
and production artists. Every detail is available for our inspection—the individually definable pieces
of fur, the texture of Mr. Fox's corduroy coat, and all the particulars of the miniature props and
lavish sets. The film's autumnal palette of golds, yellows, oranges and browns is also
immaculately reproduced, with blacks that are deep and never hazy, and shadow delineation
that's sublime. The technical encode is almost flawless as well, with no errant artifacts or other
compression-related problems. There's some slight, borderline unnoticeable banding in a few of
the background skies, but it's barely worth mentioning. Fans of stop-motion animation will likely
go slack-jawed over this one, as you get the feeling that what you're seeing looks exactly as it's
intended to be seen.
While not as immediately impressive as the picture quality, Fantastic Mr. Fox's DTS-HD
Master Audio 5.1 surround track is a winner as well. Honestly, considering the nature of the film, I
was expecting a livelier, more immersive mix, so I was a bit surprised when my rear speakers only
piped up three or four times throughout, mostly for music and the occasional sound effect, like a
crumbling wall of dirt. That said, the audio experience is not without its charms, including a wide
spread across the front channels, a solid dynamic range, Wes Anderson's characteristically specific
musical choices—the Beach Boys, Jarvis Cocker, Art Tatum—and some of the best voice acting I've
heard in an animated film in a long time. One of the things that makes a huge difference in the
performances is that, instead of cooping his actors one at a time in some sound-proofed ADR studio,
Anderson had many of the stars act together, and recorded much of the dialogue in and around an
English farmhouse, capturing quiet ambient noise along with the voices. The effect is a track with
lots of warmth and personality, even if it doesn't have the whiz-bang-pow cross-channel theatrics of
other animated titles.
Making Mr. Fox Fantastic (1080p, 44:48)
While I would've loved a commentary track with, say, Wes Anderson, Noah Baumbach, and Roald
Dahl's wife, I'll settle for this excellent six-part "making of" documentary, which demonstrates
just how much of an undertaking the production of Fantastic Mr. Fox actually was.
The Look of Fantastic Mr. Fox is an explanation of how the filmmakers arrived at Mr.
Fox's handmade, organic aesthetic, while Script to Screen details the development of a
one-act story into a full length screenplay—here we also see Wes Anderson acting out scenes
from the film for the animators to use for reference. In The Puppet Makers, production
designer Nelson Lowry and chief puppet creator Andy Gent take us into the workshop where all of
the miniatures were made, and later, in Still Life (Puppet Animation), we see the
animators doing their tedious work. Jason Schwartzman and Bill Murray show up in The
Cast to say a few words about their characters, and we also get some behind-the-scenes
footage of George Clooney and Bill Murray recording their dialogue at an English farmhouse.
Lastly, Bill and His Badger is a brief segment with the always-entertaining Murray touring
the film's miniature sets. Do note that you hit "play all," or select each sequence
individually.
A Beginner's Guide to Whack-Bat (1080p, 1:12)
"So, you want to play Whack-Bat? Here's how," begins this short animated explanation of the
rules of every woodland creature's favorite cricket-cribbing pastime.
Fantastic Mr. Fox: The World of Roald Dahl (1080i, 3:00)
A kind of ultra condensed version of the making of documentary, focusing on how Wes Anderson
drew from the life of Roald Dahl himself, even to the point of recreating Dahl's office as Mr. Fox's
office in the film.
Fantastic Mr. Fox is likely to be divisive amongst Anderson's Franny and Zooey-
toting acolytes, but this is certainly the most mainstream audience-friendly film the director has
made yet, without sacrificing any of his visual specificity and cult charm. Less for kids and more for
the kid in all of us, Fox will appeal most directly to once and future bookworms, Roald Dahl
readers, and fans of stop-motion animation. Does the film look fantastic on Blu-ray? Cuss yes it
does. Highly recommended.
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment has announced the Blu-ray release of the stop-motion animated movie 'The Fantastic Mr. Fox', which will be available in a BD/DVD/Digital Copy combo edition from March 23 (three weeks later than in the UK). 'The Fantastic Mr. ...
