Mr. Fox -- Fantastic!

I admit with some sheepishness that I am a Wes Anderson fan. Or rather, I should say, I have a love-frustration relationship with his work. On the one hand, I find the style, taste, subjects, characters and preoccupations of his films to be uncomfortably close to my own. So much so, that (and this is where the frustration comes in), I tend to see right through the artifice of his movies, to detect that lack of real substance behind the artistry. I've seen each one, all with the exception of Bottle Rocket in the order they were made, and almost every time I've walked away almost mad. Mad that there isn't something...more, but more mad at myself because I know deep down inside that if I could have a world view and film it, it would look a helluva lot like a Wes Anderson film.

So enter The Fantastic Mr. Fox. In the jerky, stop-action punctiliousness of this amazing movie, Anderson has finally come home. To me, this is the movie he has been practicing to make since Bottle Rocket. Every film, from Rushmore to Royal Tenenbaums to Darjeeling Limited, has been so perfect yet ultimately so unsatisfying, and now I realize why. In each of these movies, it is the plasticity of Anderson's filmed world, completely hermetic and constructed but with actors, "real" places and situations, it was as though the reality of the living, breathing actors had the effect of limiting the imaginative completeness of the movie taking flight.

Here, in a movie that was not just a constructed set, but literally an entire world that is made, to the smallest detail, in the service of Anderson's vision. And it is utterly delightful. It is as though only with literal puppets is the story that Anderson has always been trying to tell finally able to come fully to life.

Everything, and I mean everything about the movie was just about pitch-perfect. The voices, the characters, the sets, the soundtrack -- a collection of tunes and genres, from Ives to the Rolling Stones (and especially, to Toby's and my delight, the Beach Boys) that seemed to be waiting to be collected and put to this film.

I know I'm gushing, but I simply loved this movie. See it.