Fan­tas­tic Mr Fox

“I guess under­neath it all I just need to be loved,” mus­es Mr Fox as he con­tem­plates the prospect of a ruined home, a kid­napped nephew and a mar­riage hang­ing by the thinnest of threads. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the same can’t be said of Wes Anderson.

Ander­son has been alien­at­ing fans for the bet­ter part of half a decade because he doesn’t care about being loved. After the inten­si­ty of expe­ri­ence con­tained in Rush­more and The Roy­al Tenen­baums, his films retreat­ed into East Coast pre­ten­sion, mis­tak­ing arch­ness for intel­li­gence, irony for charm, and cyn­i­cism for wit.

Now at last he’s redis­cov­ered his mojo – and in the most unlike­ly of cir­cum­stances. Fan­tas­tic Mr Fox is Ander­son and Noah Baumbach’s adap­ta­tion of the Roald Dahl clas­sic. And what they’ve done with it is some­thing close to alchemy.

The bare bones are intact: the cun­ning Mr Fox (voiced by George Clooney) steals from three wealthy farm­ers who lay siege to his home. A life-and-death bat­tle of wits ensues, in which friends and fam­i­ly are caught in the cross­fire. Feel­ing respon­si­ble for their well­be­ing, Mr Fox con­jures a dar­ing plan to take the fight to the ene­my. So far, so Dahl, but almost every­thing else has been rad­i­cal­ly reinterpreted.

Mr Fox him­self is an urbane charmer, a reformed thief turned news­pa­per colum­nist who dress­es like a nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry coun­try gent (not unlike Ander­son). Tired of ​‘feel­ing poor’, he engages his lawyer, Bad­ger (Bill Mur­ray), to buy him a fine new prop­er­ty over­look­ing the farms of Bog­gis, Bunce and Bean – a dai­ly temp­ta­tion that sets Fox’s twin natures at war within.

All the quirks that seemed to stymie Anderson’s last two films here pay off in spades. Shoot­ing in stun­ning lo-fi stop-motion (a world away from Nick Park or Hen­ry Selick), the director’s genius for pro­duc­tion design comes to the fore. The sets are a trea­sure trove of quirky details, retro-giz­mos and snarky in-jokes; Alexan­dre Desplat’s score is skil­ful­ly inte­grat­ed into the action; while the herky-jerky ani­ma­tion gives the film a vin­tage, antique qual­i­ty that offers a two-fin­gered salute to the genre’s CG technocrats.

The per­for­mances too are huge­ly like­able. George Clooney seems to have an almost instinc­tive grasp of voice act­ing; Bill Mur­ray and Owen Wil­son have enjoy­able cameos; while Jason Schwartz­man just about keeps a han­dle on the film’s most dif­fi­cult role as Fox’s frus­trat­ed son.

The only ques­tion is whom the film is for. Ander­son has giv­en Dahl’s sto­ry a sen­si­tive, sophis­ti­cat­ed edge that’s not espe­cial­ly child friend­ly (although in fair­ness he’s also bolt­ed on a Hol­ly­wood end­ing to keep them hap­py). The ten­sion between nature and nur­ture, the bit­ter­ness of bro­ken dreams, the fail­ures of fam­i­ly, human vin­dic­tive­ness, death and redemp­tion… all are explored here, buried beneath the fake fur and but­ton eyes.

Per­haps Ander­son hasn’t changed at all, then. Per­haps this is just anoth­er film for the in-crowd – as arch and urbane as any oth­er; as Fox him­self. But then that’s the point: here it fits. It works. When the right film­mak­er and the right sub­ject mat­ter come togeth­er the result is just like one of Farmer Bean’s apples – wrong-look­ing in every way, but with stars on it nonetheless.