Fantastic Mr Fox: Trailer, Pics, Film Festival and more…

I suspect Wes Anderson doesn’t really think like the rest of us. Sometimes when watching his films I wonder if, as a kid, he was a bit like a brighter version of Ralph from The Simpsons, the child who constantly makes strange, random proclamations and seems to be living in his own weird little world.

When it was announced that Anderson was going to write and direct an adaptation of Roald Dahl’s wonderful children’s book, Fantastic Mr Fox, I thought that the film-maker might respectfully tone down his trademark tics. Silly me. Instead, it seems that the move to stop-motion has caused Anderson to turn up the quirk dial to unprecedented levels. The first trailer, which has just hit the web, just looks wrong to me in all kinds of ways. The animation itself – with all that weirdly bristling fur – is plain creepy. And every character seems to be Ralph Wiggum: 90% of the dialogue seems to have been plucked out of thin air.

Of course, it’s just a trailer, but for me, this already looks like a disaster. Dahl’s books were certainly zany, but in a very different way from Anderson’s off-the-wall wackiness. They are also very English – and I just don’t equate these characters, with their sardonic American drawls voiced by George Clooney and Jason Schwartzman, with those I remember from my childhood.

Anderson spent years working on Fantastic Mr Fox, even living at Dahl’s Buckinghamshire home for a period, so his commitment cannot be denied. But I feel he’s missed the entire essence of the book and put too much of his own stamp on it.

I’d hoped that when I saw the trailer for Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, which debuted today at Yahoo, any doubts I had based on early stills would immediately evaporate. Instead, they’ve deepened. There are great little moments in here, mostly through dialogue, but the animation doesn’t have me convinced. It looks very flat, like Wes Anderson’s trademark dead-on framing has finally betrayed him. (On the other hand, the character designs look just like drawings by Anderson’s brother, which must finally be a family aspiration brought to fruition.) That sense of creepy ’60s/’70s television animation hasn’t gone away, and the whole clip has a feeling of disconnection. See for yourself after the break.

The framing and composition is so flat, in fact, that at times I thought of video games while watching this trailer; probably the last thing Wes Anderson wants me to think. (Specifically, it was Rolling Thunder that came to mind.) I really hope that, when viewed all of a piece, the animation and framing work for the story. But right now I don’t see it, and that’s a drag.

Meanwhile, the other day I mentioned that the film would premiere at the BFI London Film Festival (instead of at Venice, to which Fox Searchlight had reportedly applied, or TIFF) and wondered if that meant the movie wasn’t any good. Fox Searchlight contacted The Playlist and said it was the studio that passed on Venice, TIFF and the offered opening night at the New York Film Festival in favor of the the London premiere. The film is the product of a British novel and the film was shot in London, so the UK premiere made the most sense. Good enough, then.

Fantastic Mr. Fox is based on the book of the same name by Roald Dahl and features the voice work of George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray and others. It opens on November 13.

Wes Anderson, what on earth is this? You’re given a huge roster of stars, the rights to a beloved children’s book, and a stop-motion animation playground, and you turn in a version of The Fantastic Mr. Fox that looks like it could have been made 20 years ago? The trailer for his adaptation of the Roald Dahl novel is available at Yahoo! Movies and embedded below, and… well, I’m not really sure what to say about it.

First of all, brace yourself for an onslaught of celebrity voices– Anderson regulars like Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray and Owen Wilson, plus George Clooney and Meryl Streep as the leads– that don’t particularly match the animal characters they’re voicing. Then there’s a plot that has something to do with stopping developers, but mainly the trailer stops for jokes that would be at place in the crappiest of early DreamWorks Animation movies. The trailer practically uses that record scratch sound effect to say, whoah! Not everything is perfect here! Every cliche in the book is alive and accounted for.

Clearly the herky-jerky animation is intentional, and part of Anderson’s usual pastiche of old-timey things and hipster sensibility. But in a year in which Coraline exists, what is the point of doing stop-motion animation if not to put you fully into this invented world? Why go through the effort? The movie looks entertaining enough as as basic kid effort, but something by one of the most celebrated auteurs of the last decade needs to have something better going on. You guys seeing something I’m not?

A few months ago, a good friend of mine saw a test screening of Fantastic Mr. Fox (no ‘The’) and described it as very much the union between Roald Dahl’s story and Wes Anderson’s style. Now, it looks like the trailer up on Yahoo! and after our jump confirms as much, and I actually find myself genuinely charmed by it — like, ‘now on my radar’ charmed.

This tale of a sly fox (voiced by George Clooney, natch) taking on some grumpy farmers reminded me a great deal of Chicken Run, if it were inspired less by The Great Escape and more by Ocean’s Eleven, and while it does look perfectly family-friendly, it really does seem to be a Wes Anderson film through and through — only Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, and Jason Schwartzman are all talking animals in stop-motion. (Hell, it’s probably the most animated Murray’s been in years!)

(Pun half-intended.)

Also starring Meryl Streep and apparently released by Fox proper (as opposed to Fox Searchlight), Fantastic Mr. Fox is due to open on November 13th.

Oh, Wes Anderson! It looked as though you squandered your immense talent with a spate of insufferably quirky, predictable, awkward young man flicks. Could a stop-motion kids’ film bring you out of your self-parodying slump?

Anderson recruited George Clooney, Meryl Streep, and Bill Murray to voice the characters from Roald Dahl’s cherished kids’ story. Though it looks a little jerky, there are some lush visuals.
Ok, time for some real talk! With Aquatic Life and Darjeeling Anderson’s once precious characters became irritating because they lost their spontaneity — whimsy is not a substitute for insight, you guys. But maybe Fantastic Mr. Fox will force Anderson away from the smug hipster trope and we’ll be able to fall in love with him again. Unless of course, there is a romantic subplot involving a pan-ethnic possum who shows Mr. Fox the true beauty in an mundane life. Booo!

Two trailers hit today for highly anticipated new films by hip auteurs. The first, for the Coen Bros.’ A Serious Man, is one of the most successful spots I’ve seen in a long time. Here’s a movie that has none of the Coens’ usual players and yet it’s unmistakably theirs (and not just because it looks like a repeat of another of theirs). Then there’s the trailer for Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, a stop-motion animated kids’ movie based on a Roald Dahl book, which features a few of the director’s usual actors and some of his signature camera style, but which, to me at least, bears little resemblance to his previous work (and not just because it’s an animation). Honestly, this may be the first of his films I don’t have interest in seeing.

I’m going to focus on the latter trailer primarily because it’s dividing bloggers, whereas everyone pretty much agrees that the Coens’ latest looks awesome. I’ve never been a big fan of stop-motion (though I do enjoy Nick Park’s films, go figure), because it usually creeps me out. Also, I’m typically against huge stars being employed for voice work in animated films, and I honestly can’t get past picturing George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Willem Dafoe and Jason Schwartzman while hearing their voices, and so I had trouble paying attention to the animals onscreen that are supposed to be the ones speaking.

I’m not alone in having no interest in this thing after seeing the trailer, but it seems some are still excited. Check out the rest of the film blogoshere’s reactions after the jump:

* S.T. VanAirsdale at Movieline tries to figure out why he’s now “running away from” this movie:
Maybe it’s because I feel like I’m in on Anderson’s enduringly ironic tone yet I’m being narrated to like a child. (“This fall! Forget super! Ignore incredible! It’s all about fantastic!!”) Maybe it’s the canned, mismatched musical accompaniment, from the first half’s generic indie jangle to the R&B soundtrack clashing with the intimate dialogue toward the end. Maybe it’s the disconnection of most of the images — some of which do look inarguably great — from any narrative context. (To wit, what’s with all the dancing? And why is there a lab?) Maybe it’s the radical shifts from cute to sexy to heavy to light to funny to “look how postmodern we are” winkiness. Or it’s just feels like the same old bundle of Andersonesque twee that the culture has been lugging around for the last decade.

* Dustin Rowles at Pajiba agrees that it’s hard to separate Clooney’s voice from his face:
It’s actually kind of jarring — as though I were watching a series of stop-motion animals performing Anderson’s Bottle Rocket script. It doesn’t help, either, that the voice cast is distracting — it’s hard — at least in this trailer — to get into the Mr. Fox character because he’s so obviously George Clooney. I just picture a guy in a sound booth with a martini and two women in short dresses draped around his arms. I don’t think that’s what Anderson was going for.

* Mickey Pagels at The Playlist also complains about some of the voices:
We’re not exactly sure what to make of it. It looks cute and offers a few light chuckles, but we’re not sure if this trailer was made for the Wes Anderson fans or for the people that plan on seeing “Aliens in the Attic” this Friday. George Clooney’s ‘Fox’ voice sounds more smooth Danny Ocean and less like that of a father/husband. In fact, many of the voices sound relatively phoned in. Bill Murray sounds bored as does Owen Wilson, whose cameo was advertised in the trailer.

* Katey Rich at Cinema Blend also negatively comments on the voices:
First of all, brace yourself for an onslaught of celebrity voices– Anderson regulars like Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray and Owen Wilson, plus George Clooney and Meryl Streep as the leads– that don’t particularly match the animal characters they’re voicing.

* Lane Brown at Vulture continues the voice work slamming:
what’s up with the voice acting? George Clooney and Jason Schwartzman’s parts were apparently recorded at history’s least enthusiastic table reading, and Bill Murray sounds like he had a plane to catch. Still, it looks cute, we guess.

* Alex Billington at First Showing isn’t entirely sold yet:
I really want to like this, just because I love well-made stop-motion animation, but I can’t get entirely into it yet. It looks very quirky and very fun, literally like a Wes Anderson movie that was made live-action that someone decided to make a stop-motion version of separately.

* Neil Miller at Film School Rejects defends the choppiness:
The trailer gives the inclination that the movie could be a bit of fun, in the way that I find all of Wes Anderson’s films to be fun. The stop-motion animation has moments of cool and moments of choppiness, but who’s to say that isn’t intentional. Overall, I’m still jazzed for this flick — I always give Wes Anderson a chance.

* Paul Tassi at JoBlo.com notes a division of interest among his coworkers:
It’s already eliciting mixed reactions from the JoBlo staff, but I have to say I land on the side of “quirky and charming” rather than “weird and creepy.”

* Kurt Halfyard at Twitch does see Anderson in this trailer, but not so much Dahl:
Despite the stop-motion animation and talking animals, it is not very hard to identify all of the Wes Anderson trademarks (not to mention nearly every voice actor here as worked with him in the past) on display…but I do not see much of the sly-dark-humour that is the usual part-and-parcel with Dahl’s work.

* Noel Murray at A.V. Club also sees Anderson and goes against the “grumbling” detractors:
…from first glance it looks like Anderson’s ported his sensibility over fully into the animated realm. Whether that’s a good thing is an open question…To me though, this trailer looks charming and funny. Bring on the deadpan whimsy!

* Sean at Film Junk continues the recognition of Anderson’s style:
It certainly looks like his obsessive attention to detail and quirky sense of humour is a strong part of the mix, and with a voice cast that includes many of his usual collaborators, he’s not branching out quite as far as some might have previously thought. I suppose this could be good or bad depending on your point of view, but personally I can’t wait to see the final product.

* William Goss at Cinematical adds some other comparisons:
This tale of a sly fox (voiced by George Clooney, natch) taking on some grumpy farmers reminded me a great deal of Chicken Run, if it were inspired less by The Great Escape and more by Ocean’s Eleven, and while it does look perfectly family-friendly, it really does seem to be a Wes Anderson film through and through

* Natasha VC at Defamer hopes this will make her love Anderson again, maybe even enough to write his films’ titles correctly:
With Aquatic Life and Darjeeling Anderson’s once precious characters became irritating because they lost their spontaneity — whimsy is not a substitute for insight, you guys. But maybe Fantastic Mr. Fox will force Anderson away from the smug hipster trope and we’ll be able to fall in love with him again. Unless of course, there is a romantic subplot involving a pan-ethnic possum who shows Mr. Fox the true beauty in an mundane life. Booo!

I’ll spit in the eye of anyone who says that animated films are “for kids.”

Sometimes they are. Anyone over the age of twelve who enjoyed the Alvin and the Chipmunks movie definitely has developmental issues. But this year alone, between Coraline, Up and the forthcoming 9, there are plenty of mainstream animated releases that entertain kids and adults.

When a filmmaker like Wes Anderson takes a children’s book by Roald Dahl it seems like a perfect match to create such a picture. The trailer that debuted on Yahoo today gives me serious pause.

The humor, such as there is any, is so muted that it is practically nonexistent. What remains, then, is something incredibly slow and precise. It’s like watching Thomas the Tank Engine with your neighbor’s kid.

The animation style didn’t grab me either. It looks like a less-interesting version of Aardman studios’ look. The animals’ faces are deliberately toned down from the usual cutesy, anthropomorphic expectations. This in itself isn’t a bad thing. (The Nightmare Before Christmas doesn’t go for cutesy, either.) But Fantastic Mr. Fox feels like watching taxidermy with George Clooney’s voice. And that ain’t fun.

I loved Roald Dahl’s books when I was, say, 9 or 10 years old. I read them all. I don’t have any specific memories about loving Fantastic Mr. Fox (it was no The Twits) but I know that I didn’t dismiss it. One can’t help but note that the release of this Roald Dahl book comes out under a month after the release of beloved children’s lit classic Where The Wild Things Are. Judging by trailers alone, I’d say Spike Jonze 1, Wes Anderson 0.

I have a mole (mole! fox! zing!) who has seen the whole film and absolutely loved it. When the trailer broke I sent it to him. He replied, “Awful trailer. Horrible. Pay no attention to it, the movie is great.” I hope he’s right. Trailers are usually a good way to measure my interest in a film, but there have been great movies with horrible trailers in the past.

The opinion on the trailer for Wes Anderson’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox seems to either be screams of delight or scowls of discontent. It seems as if it is just one more example of people forgetting completely about the story-telling aspect of movies and hoping the look fits into the nice little box they have in their mind, or at the very least matches up to everything else we see in theaters nowadays.

Over at Slash Film Russ Fischer says, “There are great little moments in here, mostly through dialogue, but the animation doesn’t have me convinced. It looks very flat… That sense of creepy ’60s/’70s television animation hasn’t gone away, and the whole clip has a feeling of disconnection.” Considering Fisher points out liking the dialogue, but got so caught up with concern over the animation has me a bit bewildered. I really don’t see where “creepy” comes in or even “flat”, but I guess his comparison to ’60s/’70s television makes sense, but doesn’t everyone love “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer”?

S.T. VanAirsdale at Movieline doesn’t even wait to get to his text before lobbing a grenade via his “The Fantastic Mr. Fox Trailer: Who’s to Blame For This?” headline, and while I am thankful his attack isn’t aimed at the animation – or even the movie – he seems to be eviserating the trailer itself:

The movie itself may be great – just the right kind of risk-taking diversion Anderson’s critics have been demanding all this time. Look at Mr. Fox’s subtle slumping gesture when Badger cries out his expertise in explosives, and say Anderson and his animators weren’t paying attention. But for everything that looks like it went into the film, how can 20th Century Fox not take the same meticulous care in cultivating its audience? I thought that was the point of trailers. (See: Serious Man, A) Sigh. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it was anything but a letdown like this.

Christopher Campbell at Spout merely says he has “no interest in this thing after seeing the trailer” but doesn’t give much of a reason before bringing in his cast of supporting links, outside of saying he’s not “a big fan of stop-motion” and is “against huge stars being employed for voice work in animated films.” The first reason I can give him, but are you really going to blame a film for employing big name actors? To each his own.

Katey Rich at Cinema Blend piles on the voice work saying the voices “don’t particularly match the animal characters they’re voicing.” I guess this means George Clooney doesn’t actually look like a fox, which I would have to agree with, he doesn’t. I would also argue James Gandolfini doesn’t match the monster Carol in Where the Wild Things Are, but then I would be assassinated by the online masses so I won’t say that…

Mickey Pagels at The Playlist wonders if the movie “was made for the Wes Anderson fans or for the people that plan on seeing Aliens in the Attic this Friday.” I guess there is no in-between on that one… perhaps people who enjoy good story-telling and aren’t immediately concerned with whether or not this is specifically a Wes Anderson movie as much as they hope it simply is a good movie. Also, I’m sorry, but to say “Bill Murray sounds bored as does Owen Wilson” is looking at a trailer way, way, way too closely in my opinion.

Finally, there are a pair of comments on my own posting of the trailer with “Hohn C.” saying, “Woww… this looks HORRIBLE,” and Patricia saying, “Agreed. Wallace and Gromit made this look easy. But this is seriously awful.”

Everyone has a right to their opinion, of course, and while some of the issues raised seem a little silly to me they aren’t entirely invalid concerns, and don’t bother me as much as the fact so many movie-lovers seem so quick to dismiss something merely for looking different. Especially when “different” is typically part of the online battle cry.

Looking back, I will quickly point to VanAirsdale’s argument comparing a trailer for an R-rated film (A Serious Man) to what appears to be a PG-rated kid flick is preposterous. Perhaps the fanboys in the audience are also upset there aren’t any giant CG robots or masked men in tights and will also quickly write this one off as well. How’s that for keeping an open mind? Come on.

Glenn Kenny took another look at the VanAirsdale complaints and Campbell’s round-up of negative publicity and posted on his blog:

The Loud Family’s “Ballad Of How You Can All Shut Up” goes out to Movieline’s S.T. Vanairsdale and Spout’s Christopher Campbell, whose concern-trolling (no links) over the putatively underwhelming trailer for Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox isn’t really anything more than very poorly disguised pre-emptive poking at a film that they’re clearly dying to shit all over. The bad faith is palpable; you can practically hear the guys honing their boasts about how they helped “bring” the movie “down” that they can recite at all the corporate holiday parties they hope the recession won’t be canceling. Really makes you love the internet even more than usual.

However, for the rest of the complaints I am actually quite shocked. If anything, the trailer previewed an animated film that looked nothing like any of the studio-driven animated films we have seen over the past several years. Considering we are talking about a group of movie bloggers that beg and demand originality it seems incredibly odd they would be so quick to pile on a film so obviously 100% unique when it comes to comparing to everything from the latest rash of CG features and even the recent stop-motion animated work of Henry Selick and Tim Burton.

Coraline
Photo: Focus Features

Actually, Selick’s Coraline (talk about creepy) is a perfect example of a film that looked amazing, but the story was incredibly weak. I think the animation in Fantastic Mr. Fox is a breath of fresh air in a medium that has nothing but a series of copycats hellbent on wowing us with visuals and – other than Pixar films – hardly determined to interest us with story. Hell, everything now also comes tagged with the gimmicky “In 3-D” tagline to which I was incredibly happy to see a good online friend in Vince Mancini at Film Drunk tackled in his posting of the Mr. Fox trailer:

A lot of the other movie sites out there are complaining about the animation looking “weird” or “flat”, but I like that it’s easy on the CGI and not 3D. 3D is particularly stupid. I like to be free to look at any part of the frame without getting a GD headache, and the screen looking like a pop-up book isn’t a huge selling point for me. And if I wanted to wear glasses I would’ve been born a nerd. I don’t want 3D, I don’t want my chair shaking around, and I don’t need an “immersive experience.” How bout you just make a good movie and let me sit here with my nachos and stay outta my sh*t, eh hotshot?

Nope, The Fantastic Mr. Fox is not in 3-D. It’s not a CG-driven film either. It doesn’t even use motion-capture technology designed to revolutionize the history of cinema. However, it looks like it has compiled an incredible list of talented actors to voice what looks like a wholly unique animated experience with a story that looks like it could be a lot of fun.

Of course, I say this knowing full well the animation is all pretty much everyone is going to look at, completely dismiss and most likely turn this into a box-office failure as they go marching on to the Jeffrey Katzenberg CGI 3-D drum beat. At least, come November 13th, I have something unique to look forward to before the next 3-D CG motion-capture, knock-my-socks off with 70-foot tall movie screens assaults my senses and steals my soul. Will it be good? I don’t know, but I am anxious to give it a try.