| Sunday, November 29, 2009 |
| Fantastic |
As the years go by, I get pickier & pickier about which movies I'll go see. I am no longer in Hollywood's target demographic, and the movies that are aimed at me tend to be crappy romances like "Nights in Rodanthe." I am grateful, though, for the handful of quirky filmmakers who have somehow managed to carve out careers despite shunning formula fare like superhero flicks or by-the-numbers romantic comedies -- people like Charlie Kaufman, whose "Synecdoche, New York" may have been a failure, but it was surely one of the most interesting failures of recent years; Alexander Payne ("Sideways," "Election"); Brad Bird (director of two of the most original blockbusters of the decade, "Ratatouille" and "The Incredibles"); and Wes Anderson, whose films frequently manage to be beautiful, maddening, moving and twee all at once.
I get that a lot of people don't care for Anderson's films; he loves creating these elaborate cutaway sets that are almost like giant versions of dollhouses, and his interest in creating memorable characters may seem to take a back seat to deciding which old Kinks song to use in a particular scene. However, there is no denying that when you see an Anderson movie, it's the perfectly realized product of one man's vision. I think the most successful of his films is "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou," which is pretty much all artifice, from the gorgeous CGI sea creatures to the troubador who shows up to sing David Bowie songs in Portuguese. I am reminded of Mark Twain's foreword to "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn": "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot." You just have to sit back and go with the flow and enjoy the Wes-ness of it all.
On the other hand, the one Anderson film I actively disliked was "The Darjeeling Limited," which aims to make the viewer care about its three main characters, brothers played by Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman and Owen Wilson. I never did, nor could I quite get over the "white guys go on spiritual quest in third world country" premise. The train set, however, was really cool.
I wasn't quite sure what to expect from "Fantastic Mr. Fox," Anderson's latest feature, which is based on a book by Roald Dahl and uses stop-motion animation to tell its story of a fox's epic battle with three farmers. Despite the fact that it's putatively a children's movie, I was pleased to note that all of Anderson's tropes were in full effect, from the cutaway sets to the on-screen titles to the carefully chosen pop songs. I also liked the rather low-tech nature of the stop-motion; at times, the figures move so stiffly that they resemble children's playthings instead of characters in a multi-million-dollar movie. Then there are shots in which the fox fur rustles in the breeze and it looks so real that you could practically reach out and touch it. Still, compared to the high tech computer animation of "Up" or "Monsters vs. Aliens," it's got a decidedly old-fashioned feel.
It would be interesting to know if children actually like this movie, or just find it odd. At one point, Mr. Fox, who has given up his life of chicken-stealing crime in favor of a job in, of all things, journalism, opines, "Why a fox? Why not a horse, or a beetle, or a bald eagle? I'm saying this more as, like, existentialism, you know? Who am I?" Movies like "Shrek" may make pop culture references that go over kids' heads, but not many animated movies have lines of dialogue influenced by Kierkegaard.
People who find Anderson's films too precious by half might still enjoy "Mr. Fox" -- Joe only attended as a favor to me and he liked it well enough. George Clooney was the perfect choice to play the debonair fox, and Meryl Streep is fine in the smaller role of Mrs. Fox (in children's stories like this one, the guys have all the fun, while the women stay behind and tut-tut). Perhaps the auteur has found the ultimate outlet for his dollhouse aesthetic in this carefully created little animated world.
And now, a note about two of the previews that played before the movie: "Tooth Fairy," starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, and "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeaquel." Forget waterboarding -- if these flicks were on infinite loop at Gitmo, it would have to count as some sort of violation of the Geneva Convention. And yet, it wouldn't surprise me if both of them far outgross "Mr. Fox." The John Travolta/Robin Williams comedy "Old Dogs," which got some of the worst reviews of the year, outearned the Anderson film by a factor of two to one. It's a wonder that a little gem like "Mr. Fox" made it into the multiplexes at all. |
posted by 125records @ 5:43 PM  |
|
| 3 Comments: |
-
B & J both said they loved "Fantastic Mr. Fox" but they did not elaborate. I suspect they enjoyed the digging and chasing and dancing the most. I enjoyed the animation and the letting go of expectations the most (misspoken; I didn't really enter w/expectations much). Well, I did expect to enjoy a "Princess and the Frog" preview, but no such luck; our trailer sequence included the 2 horrible, horrible forthcoming movies you mentioned. Good thing "Mr. Fox" was so good I didn't think about those offenses again until we were back in the lobby, confronted with the outsized cardboard cutouts and the 5-foot-tall plaster chipmunks.
-
I'm apparently so far out of the demographic that I had no idea "Old Dogs" even existed. Seems like every big-studio movie opens big - whether it stays big is iffier. But it's sorta like the NYT best-seller list: who are these people who obsessively buy the new books by Brand-Name Author X the moment they come out? I can't help but wonder if someone's gaming the system...
-
I loved loved loved Wes' first two movies, Bottle Rocket and Rushmore. But all that came to a screeching halt with The Royal Tenenbaums, which was to me far too cutesy and precious. I did finally see The Life Aquatic on DVD a couple of years after its theatrical release, and liked it better than Tenenbaums, but I still felt like I'd discovered that the real Wes Anderson wasn't the one I thought I knew after the first two movies, and wasn't the one I like. Basically, I agree with the Steely Dan school of Wes Anderson criticism: http://www.steelydan.com/heywes.html
|
| |
| << Home |
| |
|
|
|
| About Me |
Name: Sue
Home: San Francisco Bay Area, California, United States
About Me: Email me: talk at interbridge dot com
See my complete profile
|
| Previous Post |
|
| Archives |
|
| Links |
|
|
| Powered by |
|
|
B & J both said they loved "Fantastic Mr. Fox" but they did not elaborate. I suspect they enjoyed the digging and chasing and dancing the most. I enjoyed the animation and the letting go of expectations the most (misspoken; I didn't really enter w/expectations much). Well, I did expect to enjoy a "Princess and the Frog" preview, but no such luck; our trailer sequence included the 2 horrible, horrible forthcoming movies you mentioned. Good thing "Mr. Fox" was so good I didn't think about those offenses again until we were back in the lobby, confronted with the outsized cardboard cutouts and the 5-foot-tall plaster chipmunks.