Fantastic Mr. Fox

Arriving in theaters shortly after Spike Jonze's Wild Things pensively stomped their way across the screen, Wes Anderson's adaptation of Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr. Fox presents a distinctly different take on indie-minded/Hollywood-funded children's cinema. Photographed with beautifully organic and imperfect stop-motion animation, the film shares the former movie's adult appeal and a bit of its philosophical bent, but where Wild Things broods, Mr. Fox bristles with fleet-footed energy. With a voice cast led by George Clooney (in his most charming and unguarded performance since Ocean's Eleven), Fox is populated with articulate woodland creatures, sporting American accents, and a band of curmudgeonly British humans. When Mr. Fox's bold thefts from the farms of Boggis, Bunce and Bean endanger both his own family and the entire population of nearby furry folk, the rakish self-professed "wild animal" must come up with a plan to escape the Bean-masterminded habitat-destroying siege. Working loosely, but reverently, with Dahl's entertaining tale, Anderson clearly found inspiration in stepping away from his own idiosyncratic narratives and spending time in the author's autumnal English countryside, even if he allegedly rarely left his Parisian accommodations during the film's time-consuming production. Anderson's most consistent and enjoyable movie since Rushmore, Mr. Fox deserves to be adored by an audience beyond Wes aficionados and stop-motion enthusiasts--it's a true children's-lit-inspired classic, fantastically plain and simple.