The Fantastic Mr. Fox

Usually date night for my wife and me consists of eating dinner (either take out or home cooked) and then some sort of nap time followed by a nice quiet evening of repose in front of the tube sitting in silence eating potato chips or bonbons, whichever are closer at hand. But this time that wasn’t to be. No sir, we needed romance. This time my wife decided that we were going to do something different. She woke me up from my post sup stupor and told me we were going to a movie.

Alright! I thought. I love movies. My taste runs from Midnight Meat Train to Sexy Beast; from Fried Green Tomatoes to Star Wars. I didn’t know what was playing, but I’m pretty open-minded, so I was pretty excited about the idea of going to see one . . . that is until we got to the theatre.

We scanned the marquee and tacitly scratched each movie off as we went down the list: New Moon – holding out ‘til I see the first one; Ninja Assassin, 2012 – grounds for divorce if suggested; Old Dogs – too young; The Road – not romantic enough; The Men Who Stare at Goats and Pirate Radio – both start in an hour and we didn’t want to see a movie that badly.

That left us with Precious, and The Fantastic Mr. Fox.

I hate to say it, but even though my wife said that the reviews for Precious were good, I couldn’t bring myself to go see a movie that starred Mariah Carey. There’s something about that woman that gets on my onions. So that left us with The Fantastic Mr. Fox. So be it, I thought to myself. I have no idea what this movie is about, but let the romance begin. We grabbed our popcorn, settled into our seats, and I honestly thought to myself, “as long as you hold her hand she won’t be mad if you fall asleep.”

But as soon as the movie started sleep was the furthest thing from my mind. I was absolutely entranced by The Fantastic Mr. Fox. From the stop motion photography (the digging and eating scenes are hilarious) and the beautiful set designs to the rich character development and dialogue (watch how he and his lawyer argue) everything pulled me in.

The movie tells the story of a very charming and dapper fox (George Clooney) that has a penchant for living on the . . .er . . . wild side. The movie starts out with Mr. Fox and his wife Felicity (Meryl Streep) sneaking, somewhat acrobatically, into a farmer’s chicken coop to steal some chickens. They get the chickens, but without revealing too much about the plot, his wife asks him to give up his wild ways and settle down, which he does.

For a while.

A few years pass and Mr. Fox decides on one final job. He enlists the services of his friend the opossum, Kylie (Wally Wolodarsky) to formulate and carry out the plan with him. They don their bandit hats and set out to steal from each one of the three farmers, Boggis, Bunce, and Bean.

Suffice to say things get a bit out of hand.

The film has an all-star cast of voices – each perfect in helping to develop its character’s depth, but this is only a small part of the movie’s appeal. The movie’s appeal lies largely in the fact that it is a good story told well and at the end of the day what more can you ask of a movie? In the end, while it may not be exactly conducive to romance it is very entertaining and I wouldn’t hesitate to suggest it to anyone regardless of age.