As a kid, I would've sworn I didn't live in a particularly devoutly Christian household. Sure, I'd been baptized, and I went to Sunday School and Girl's Brigade, but I figured that was just what people did. Religion was just a series of stories kids learned to teach them to be good to one another, wasn't it?
The only thing that did seem slightly off was my parents' aversion to sci-fi and fantasy; I remember being told at an early age that my father didn't want to read Witch Winkle to me, from Twinkle comics, and that if I wanted to read it I'd have to learn to do so myself. I applied myself assiduously to this task, but even if the final outcome was positive I still retain a nagging resentment over every single battle I had to try and obtain a fantasy fiction book over a junior encyclopaedia or some or other historic family saga.
Films like Labyrinth, therefore? They were the forbidden fruit, and I craved them on a level that bordered on the pathological even though they inevitably proved slightly disappointing, as, for instance, when the cinematic incarnation of the Neverending Story only covered a tiny percentage of the content of the book my seven-year-old self had had to mount a strategic PR campaign to be able to possess.
Looking back, though, it was an interesting time for children's films - while computer-generated effects were still in their infancy, puppetry and animatronic technology had been coming on in leaps and bounds. At the forefront of this was Jim Henson and his creature workshop, creators of The Muppets and Sesame Street as well as movies like The Dark Crystal.
Labyrinth, in fact, was created in an attempt to succeed at capturing the audiences The Dark Crystal, with its selfconscious ugliness and kid-alienating horror, could not. Former Python Terry Jones was drafted in to write an appealing screenplay, and David Bowie was recruited to provide a compelling antagonist in the form of the Goblin King.
At the heart of the story, however, is Sarah, (Jennifer Connolly), a fifteen-year-old girl of an imaginative turn of mind who bitterly resents being called upon to look after her baby stepbrother, Toby. One night when Toby won't stop crying, frustration leads her to verbally wish for the goblins to take him away, little knowing that these creatures actually exist and are listening to her every word. Mere moments later, she finds herself with thirteen hours to traverse the Goblin King's labyrinth in the hope of winning Toby back from this menacing but oddly enticing individual...
The good
I cannot even begin to imagine the amount of work that must have gone into bringing this one to the big screen. Labyrinth looks fantastic, boasting large-scale puppet work, complex sets, beautiful costumes and even a primitive CGI barn owl. And then there's David Bowie, a work of art in and of himself, and the subject of many a pre-teen fantasy amongst girls of my generation.
I think similar work probably went into the script, too - it recalls Alice in Wonderland, yes, but also Red Riding Hood, and any number of other stories where a naive young girl enters a dark and unfamiliar place and embarks on frightening adventures. This is definitely a film with subtext, and a more diligent reviewer might delve deeper. I do like that somebody thought to put it there, even if they didn't do so with any particular subtlety or skill.
The bad
Aged ten or so, I remember thinking Labyrinth was slightly rubbish - well, more than slightly. Of course, it could have been the weight of a couple of years of eager anticipation, but I have vague memories of bad acting and much more definite ones of incoherent, illogical storytelling.
Nearly thirty years later, I feel duty bound to report that on this occasion, my younger self hit the nail right on the head.
I don't think anything about the film would be unforgivable if it wasn't for the appallingly bad acting - the entire cast is guilty of this and so it's probably unfair to dump the majority of the blame on Jennifer Connelly's then 14-year-old shoulders, so I'll dump it on Henson for casting her instead. She reads every line like an early run-through of a school play, distracting the viewer from what's actually a pretty compelling kiddie horror story. Bowie is scarcely any better, though, sounding like a bad impersonator doing his best (worst) comedy accent.
And then we come to the question of Terry Jones attempting to write about a barely pubescent girl. It's less sinister than I make it sound, obviously; unlike many performers of their generation, the Pythons have kept a relatively clean reputation. Still, there's some fairly heavy messages to the effect that in order to grow up and be a decent woman, you have to cast your toys aside (literally, in one scene) and start focusing on what really matters: babies. Why couldn't Sarah have grown up for her own sake rather than that of a small child?
Beyond that, the narrative structure is what, when I like a film, I tend to refer to as dreamlike. I didn't particularly like Labyrinth, though, so I'll cheerfully refer to it as a hot mess where things happen in sequence without any sort of linking elements to make it make any sort of sense. Some of the things are fun, certainly, or scary, or visually appealing, but there isn't really any structure to them - it's kind of like a showreel for the Creature Workshop and their admittedly stunning work.
The verdict
Would I recommend Labyrinth? Probably not. Would I recommend that you steer clear, though? Again, no, actually. So, is it a noble failure? Probably not, because 1) a lot of people seem to love it and 2) nothing with that many gratuitous fart gags could ever be classed as noble. Watch it to appreciate the artistry, at least, because we're unlikely to see its like again.
2013 was an interesting year for me, cinematically speaking. It was the year I first started making solo forays to the movies, for one thing, and that's definitely proved to be a bit of a life-changer. I'm yet to find another activity that offers quite such a guaranteed sensation of luxury as buying one of the nice seats for a morning or early afternoon showing, stretching out and letting the latest silly superhero blockbuster wash over me like a particularly comforting tsunami.
Iron Man 3 didn't disappoint, as I recall, and neither has most of what I've seen since, which is why I was thinking about reviewing Avengers: Age of Ultron today. If I'm going to pay cinema prices to watch a film, though, I like to watch as a fan, not a critic, and while I'm sure I'll find lots of holes to pick in a year or two, for now, I'd rather commend it as a couple of happy if ultimately forgettable hours, utterly intellectually unimproving and all the better for it.
There was more to 2013 than that, however, since it marked the release of two comedies set in the two different areas of rural England where I spent much of my childhood. Of course I was interested, even if it was for the nostalgia kick more than the actual content.
I've already spoken a little about The World's End; at some point, I might review it more comprehensively, maybe even Monday if tomorrow's TV listings don't appeal. Today, however, it's the turn of Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa.
Created by Armando Iannucci and played by Steve Coogan, the character of Alan Partridge has been going for a long while - since 1991, according to Wikipedia, when he appeared in Radio 4 news comedy On the Hour. Aged 14, I was probably a bit young for Radio 4 (age 38, I probably still am), and so he slipped under my radar for a few years, gradually popping up as a pop culture icon rather than as a character I could identify as being from any one show. I knew the catchphrases, but I'd be lying if I said I found him particularly funny - he was just there, as part of the cultural landscape.
When I heard he was getting his own movie, therefore, I wasn't particularly excited; my general opinion was that it wasn't for me and, in any case, was probably a decade or so too late. True, the Norfolk setting was appealing, because I'd spent so many years there as a child and young adult, but that wasn't really enough to sell it to me.
Then, bored on a lunchtime at work, I saw the trailer and found myself laughing like an idiot at the combination of finely-honed line delivery and very British references, and wondered whether it might not be worth a try at some point.
In any case, for the uninitiated, Alan Partridge is a TV and radio presenter in his fifties, fronting Midmorning Matters on North Norfolk Digital radio. It's the sort of show that feels instantly familiar in its gaucheness, as socially awkward presenters act as friends to the even more socially awkward listener base in a sort of good-natured but embarrassing symbiosis. The jokes are groaners and the politics is slightly worrying, but it's better than being alone.
Alan's world is shattered, however, when media conglomerate Gordale Media arrives to transform North Norfolk Digital into Shape, a slick, modern station with no room for oldsters like Alan or Pat Farrell (Colm Meaney), who runs the late night show. With his job on the line, Alan panics, explaining eloquently why Pat should be first in the firing line.
What he doesn't bank on, however, is Pat taking his unemployment quite so personally. Before long, there's a siege situation going on, and only one man can save the day...
The good
I thought Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa was a tremendously likeable film; even after several viewings, it retains an unerring ability to make me laugh out loud. There's something about the cosiness of it, I think, and the obvious sympathy and affection it holds for its subject, despite him being a bit of a prat. It's hard to dislike the character of Alan Partridge, because I think that at some point, most of us have felt that we just might be him, if only for a little while.
Objectively speaking, it's a nicely-paced piece, packing just the right amount of story into a 90-minute runtime so that there's always something happening, but not so fast that the characters don't have time to breathe and be themselves. The cinematography is on the better side of solid, making appropriate use of longer takes a rather than ever getting too hectic even when the action scenes kick in. It's all backed by soundtrack that's defiantly dad rock, only taking a couple of detours for comedy value - there's nothing like the judicious use of Philip Glass' Koyaanisqatsi theme to give a heads-up that a character might, just possibly, be inclined towards taking themself too seriously.
Performances are lovely, of course - Coogan has been doing this for years and is utterly at ease within the role, playing beautifully off safe hands such as Colm Meaney and Felicity Montagu, a delight as Partridge's long-suffering PA, Lynn. Since this is a British comedy made within the past decade there's also an obligatory appearance from Darren Boyd, who I honestly thought was in every British film and TV series made in the past decade, but who turns out to have merely been in every British film and TV series I've watched.
The bad
I couldn't find a lot wrong with this, to be honest. That said, I'm aware that it's an intensely localised film - would it play as well to a younger audience, or one from outside the UK? Possibly not - I'm not sure what sort of an impact it made on the international stage, but I can't see it having been particularly dramatic. Still, there's nothing wrong with being niche, and I found it a lot funnier than most mainstream comedy. It's defiantly low-key, but again, I found this to be just another part of its considerable charm.
The verdict
A really pleasant way to spend an afternoon, provided the Hollywood blockbuster machine hasn't dulled your senses too much to be able to enjoy it. Highly recommended.
I find it hard to believe that Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is over thirty years old now. I was too afraid to watch it for the longest time, at least by little kid standards; I was seven when it came out, but I didn't see it until a good three or four years later, when my then best friend enthused so endlessly that I had to take a look, even if I did hide my eyes for the scary bits.
There were a lot of scary bits, too - bugs! Eyeball soup! Fake skeletons! Still, as my bravery grew I realized there was nothing quite so horrible as that nasty face-melting scene everyone remembers from Raiders of the Lost Ark (not linking to it, because I don't want to risk having to see any stills.) Still, it was a romp, a fun rollercoaster ride with fun-sized shocks and silly physical comedy, even if the obligatory love interest was incredibly annoying.
I'm not quite sure when I stopped watching it, or when I started reading reviews by people who thought it wasn't the greatest adventure film ever made. Certainly, I don't think that was the reason I didn't see it for fifteen or twenty years; more likely, they simply stopped showing it on TV for a while. For the past few years, however, it's been in regular rotation on BBC3, so eventually I found myself wanting to take another look.
All I can say is that we've come a long way since 1984, and luckily, those times fade further into the past as each day goes by.
The Indiana Jones films are all based on the radio adventure serials of the 1930s; the plot, therefore, tends to be less of a story and more of an armature to be dressed with romance, comedy and stunts. In Temple of Doom, this mostly concerns a cult located deep within the mountains of India - I'm not sure which mountains these are, but cliff faces and jungles and precarious rope bridges abound. The important thing, however, is that the cult have taken control of some mystic stones belonging to a small rural village. Without the stones, the villagers are helpless in the face of famine and disaster, albeit not so helpless that they can't somehow cause the air crash that brings Indy (Harrison Ford) to them along with the inevitable sidekicks - in this case, Korean kid Short Round (Jonathan Ke Quan) and shrill nightclub singer Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw).
Inevitably, it's up to Indy to destroy the cult, save the village and win the girl. The narrative armature, however, dictates that none of these outcomes are ever in any real doubt, so as often happens, it becomes all about the journey.
The good
As spectacle, yes, Temple of Doom works. It's big, it's loud, it's nonstop, and it has all those lovely, slightly shonky 80s sets that somehow look all the more convincing for being made of plaster of paris and children's paint. I have to admit that I still love the visuals, from Willie's dress in the opening scene in the Shanghai nightclub, to the firepits at the heart of the cult's mountain hideout. If there's one thing I love, it's the sort of cavernous, overdone sound stages where every expense has been spared to make it look as though little expense has been spared (description stolen from Douglas Adams), and the film provides these in abundance.
Some of the action sequences are nicely timed, too; a mine cart chase towards the end of proceedings is immense fun, while an escape from a small plane brought countless James Bond movies to mind.
Everything is as self-assured as you'd expect from Spielberg and Lucas, as confident and cynical as Indiana Jones himself, and if the film falls a little short on the joy and wonderment front, it grabs the attention from the first frame and holds it to the last with remarkable efficiency.
The bad
...But what if Spielberg and Lucas weren't evil? What if they weren't of an age when sexism and racism were the highest form of wit, and comedy gold came in the form of any non-Western accent?
Unfortunately, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom doesn't answer these questions. Instead, it damns its creators with a display of political incorrectness that was apparently seen as slightly shocking even at the time - in this day and age, it all looks practically prehistoric.
We have Indy, therefore, as a white messiah to a village of helpless, impoverished Indians; at the end of the film there's even a scene where he's surrounded by hundreds of adoringly grateful brown people desperate to lay their hands on him. This neatly sums up the tone of the entire film, in fact, where anybody who isn't a white American male is either a victim, a villain, comic relief or some combination of these.
Witness poor, hapless Willie Scott, as played by poor, hapless Kate Capshaw. She's portrayed exclusively as a spoiled, shrieking harridan. She complains endlessly when deposited in the jungle after bailing from the plane crash I mentioned earlier, and screams when, say, being doused with water by an elephant or suddenly encountering a large snake. Indy and Short Round are irritated by her, and when they laugh at her repeated comeuppances, the audience is encouraged to be complicit.
The IMDB tells me that Capshaw remains married to Spielberg, which to my mind suggests a profound deficiency in the self esteem department.
Even when the film was released, much was made of its supposedly darker tone. I can buy this, sort of - child slavery and ritual murder aren't necessarily the first subjects that would come to mind as thematic elements for a jolly family adventure romp - but for me, the real darkness comes from the endless glibness of the production and directorial teams, so comfortable and self-satisfied within their coccoons of privilege that they couldn't conceive of the sheer wrongness of this film's politics.
The verdict
You could disengage your brain for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and have a passably good time; possibly even a very good time, if you're very young or not very bright. Really, though, there's any number of movies out there that offer equal or better thrills without the sublimated sense of white male supremacy. Go watch The Phantom instead, or Con Air, two very different examples of how to nail a silly summer action blockbuster.
I saw both of these movies today while recovering from having half the skin of my left temple stretched across to somewhere above the middle of my left eyebrow.
I've seen them both before, and to be honest, they both deserve more attentive watching than I was able to give them. Sure, Bill and Ted celebrates stupidity and Cloudy... suffers from depressingly lazy writing, but they both share a pinpoint-sharp sense of comic timing that allows them to be consistently entertaining despite some glaring flaws.
Recommended on both counts, but It occurs to me that I should probably have watched John Woo's Face:Off instead.
Recipe for one animated family blockbuster:
Take one time-honoured, classic children's book loved by parents and kids alike.
Now, this is an organic, handcrafted children's book, not pumped full of sugar and hormones like many childrens' books of today, which is why no matter how delicious it might be on its own, it's going to be necessary to add a few things to make it stretch a little further. One of the commonest ways of doing this is with bread, so why not simply cook up a few extra roles? If your local convenience store stocks teen heroes or popular family favourites, you can use their voices to flavour the roles and add sweetness.
You could probably cook and serve your movie just as it is, and people would probably like it well enough. However, this isn't just any movie we're making here, it's a blockbuster - it has to have the WOW factor or the kids might turn up their noses. Besides, many time-honoured children's classics carry moral messages, and you know how hard it is to get kids to swallow anything that might be good for them!
It can be quite hard to disguise a really powerful message, so we recommend you stir in some storecupboard favourites such as songs and one-liners, plus a generous pinch of 3D. If you're still not sure whether the little ones will eat it up, however, don't be afraid to add several bottles of artificial colour.
Once it's all mixed up together, bake until the preview ratings are favourable.
Serve up, and hate yourself forever.
Warning: The Lorax is a sometimes food. Frequent re-watchings may lead to migraines, earworms and unmentionable bowel symptoms. You may think this review is contrived and clumsy, but trust me, my Seuss parody would have been much, much worse.
I love animated movies, really I do, but in recent years I've found that the vast majority of them don't half give me a headache. Common sense dictates that this is because I'm growing older and more sensible (read: boring), but I genuinely believe the films have changed as much as I have. Granted, technology has advanced, but tastes have changed, too; far be it from me to side with the luddites, but I do think that attention spans have grown shorter while moviemakers remain inclined to cater to the lowest common denominator. Don't get me wrong, there's good work going on out there - Despicable Me and the Kung Fu Panda films spring to mind, with their endless warmheartedness and focus on the personalities - but in general, the trend runs towards the hypersaturated and hyperactive. For all the inventiveness of the likes of Wreck-It Ralph, these are films I often have to psych myself up to view more than once.
Step forward Rango, then, to remind me that my inner child hasn't quite died of malnutrition yet. It's a lovely, inventive piece of storytelling that reinvents the Baron Munchausen myth and transports it to the Wild West, as our chameleonic hero (literally) finds himself hit by a car and sent flying from his solitary existence into the drought-ravaged town of Dirt.
Unused to company other than his own and that of the broken plastic toys he keeps as friends, Rango (voiced by Johnny Depp) finds himself in the presence of people who ain't none too keen on strangers. In desperation, he uses his knack for drama and storytelling to invent himself as a mysterious gunslinger, but of course, his lies backfire on him - this is a kids' movie, and so some things are a given. Before long, he finds himself charged with solving the mystery of the drought, save the town and winning the heart of the lovely - read: similarly-sized and aged - Beans (Isla Fisher).
The good
As previously stated, this is a lot easier on the retina than the majority of modern mainstream CGI movies. It takes its cues from classic Westerns, faded and muted and occasionally bleached to a blinding white. Backgrounds and scenery tend towards photorealism, which is something you can afford to do in a film with animal protagonists; if humans had appeared in more than one or two clever cameos we might have been in uncanny valley territory, but the grotesquerie of the characters establishes that we're in a different world, and not one that might ever be confused with our own.
This grotesquerie extends to the vocal work, too - this isn't a subtle film, not by any means, and the broad humour is lent flavour by a bunch of tough guys and character-piece experts clearly having the time of their lives. Left to do his thing, Depp is appealing, while Fisher shows a charming willingness to abandon her dignity and throw herself into one of the most thankless love interest roles in recent history. Inevitably, though, my favourite performance was Bill Nighy's Rattlesnake Jake, a snarling, moustachioed menace far too tough to ever need to raise his voice.
What I really love about Rango, though, is that it isn't afraid to show its intelligence. It's a kids' film - at least, I'd hope so, with all the scatological humour - but one that isn't afraid to reference Hunter S Thompson and Apocalypse Now. It's not afraid to ease up on the pace, either, and devote a few minutes to Rango riffing with a plastic fish or having a philosophical conversation with Roadkill the dead armadillo. None of which is to say that the action scenes aren't excellent, as Rango flees from a horde of bat-riding hillbillies or repeatedly tries to outwit a red-tailed hawk.
The bad
I say this is a smart film for smart kids, you might say this is a film in search of an audience. If you did, I'd say you lacked a certain faith in humanity, but I'm not sure I'd entirely blame you. I won't deny that some of the humour was a little broad for my taste, but I seriously doubt anybody's going to be remaking The Thick Of It with CGI animals any time soon, no matter how persuasive emails I send to Nickelodeon and Armando Iannuci might be.
The verdict
It's a good movie, and you should probably take a look, especially if you like Westerns. I'd say more, but I'm too busy being amused by the thought of Peter Capaldi as a honey badger.
Hurray, it's Easter!
What sort of Eastery movies can I watch and then share with you?
Let me see... there's any number of turgid Christian propaganda pieces, or there's Hop. I'd like to say I'm as fond of turgid Christian propaganda as anybody, but that wouldn't be true; your average Christian, for example, is probably fonder of it than I am.
It's fair to say that if you show me a cute rabbit and a DVD one of the aforementioned pieces of turgid Christian propaganda, it'd almost certainly be the rabbit that got and held my attention.
So, I watched Hop for you. As it happened, there wasn't any Christian propaganda. There was The Iron Giant, but the last time I watched that particular film at this particular point in my menstrual cycle, whole households drowned in my floods of anguished tears.
Hop, then. It's about the Easter Bunny. Technically, it's about the Easter Bunny's son - he's called EB, and is voiced by Russell Brand. He's a bit of a disappointment to his father.
Fred O'Hare (James Marsden, in what I'm 90 percent sure was a live action role) is also a disappointment to his own father. He's been out of college ten years and still hasn't found a job. This is disappointing enough, obviously, but can you imagine what a blow it would be if your 28 year old son had the face and body of a man twelve years older? A more sympathetic father would have sorted out some sort of medical help by now, surely, but Fred's dad is just so damned creeped out that he simply wants him out of the house.
As sure as chocolate eggs is eggs, our two heroes protagonists meet up and wacky adventures ensue, as EB tries to find himself and Fred tries to find gainful employment. Over on Easter Island, meanwhile, a sort of desperate version of the North Pole as portrayed in Christmas movies, Carlos the chick has decided to stage a coup (peep?).
Will the plucky adventurers save Easter, or will the world's children be forever condemned to Easter baskets filled with crickets and mealworms? If they were, would that solve our current juvenile tooth decay crisis?
The good
Fluffy rabbits are almost always cute; the animated ones on display here aren't the cutest but they're still marginally cuter than sweaty hairy men nailed to lumps of wood.
The bad
I've reviewed a lot of bad films on here, and I like to think that very few of them were completely irredeemable.
Hop, though? This goes into Room 101, with Rock of Ages and the dreaded Green Lantern. It's probably worse than either of those, in fact, because it's the total package; looks bad, sounds bad and leaves a truly foul taste in the mouth.
The absolute worst thing about it is the racism. Aside from the English Easter Bunnies, the film contains precisely two non-white characters. One of these is Carlos, fattest of the Easter chicks, who speaks with a thick hispanic accent despite all the other characters of his species bearing American accents. Carlos, it should be noted, is the villain - you can tell that because he talks about EB being privileged.
Worse, however, is Alex, Fred's adopted sister, an Asian kid of around 12 or so who's the butt of all manner of nastiness in order to make Fred (white, male, adult) look good. Who on earth thought this was a good idea? How could nobody have picked up on this and realized how incredibly ill-advised this was? The mind boggles.
Faced with this sort of bullshit, things like EB getting sexy with Fred's older sister's hair almost fade into insignificance, almost. Were they really going for an audience of teens looking for edgy thrills, and did they really think these were the sorts of viewers who'd go to a movie about the Easter Bunny? More to the point, did they really think these were the sorts of viewers who'd go for James Marsden?
The verdict
This is a nasty, ugly mess of a movie without anything whatsoever to recommend it. Avoid.
I've always felt that Wes Anderson is the sort of director whose films I really ought to love - they're smart and odd - both qualities I possess, or aspire to. He takes casts of actors I adore and gives them lots of time to breathe in low-key, interesting roles. Best of all, he doesn't seem to feel the need to idiot-proof his work, which means he's able to skip the clumsy exposition and brutally manipulative soundtracking that puts me off so many otherwise blameless films. Like I say, I should love them.
I don't, though, for the most part, much to my private shame. I admire the likes of The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, admire the heck out of them, in fact, but it's not the same thing. I admire them like an exquisite china figurine, in that I'm dazzled and charmed by their beauty and delicacy and rich colours, but you wouldn't want to take a piece of Wedgewood or Royal Doulton in your arms and hold it close to your heart, would you?
All of that changed, however, in 2009, with the release of Anderson's adaptation of Roald Dahl's children's story Fantastic Mr. Fox. I was curious about this one from the moment I heard it was in production, but cautiously so - how would such a mannered director cope with Dahl's notably rumbustious characters and storylines? More to the point, how was he physically going to recreate a book about talking animals? Oh. Stop motion animation? Now I began to see how it all might fit together.
In case anybody reading this had a deprived childhood, both the literary and cinematic versions of Fantastic Mr. Fox relate the adventures of the titular character, a singular individual who can't quite resist the lure of local farmers' livestock despite despite being ostensibly settled down with a wife and family. When he starts raiding the poultry sheds of Messrs. Boggis, Bunce and Bean, however, he soon realizes he could lose far more than he ever intended...
The good
I know that as a grown-up, sensible film critic I'm not supposed to admit to having favourite films. Nevertheless, Fantastic Mr. Fox is my favourite. That's favourite singular, the one movie I absolutely, definitively love more than any other film I've seen in my life so far. Every single frame is a beautiful, miniaturized work of art, while vocal work is done by a mixture of stars and relative unknowns who deliver Anderson's stilted, stylized lines in a naturalistic way that makes the characters sound just as confused and screwed up as everybody else in the world.
Did I mention that I love this film?
Unfortunately, I love it so much it's hard to know where to start highlighting the good parts - every time I watch, I land up cracking a huge sentimental grin about once every thirty seconds or so. I think it's the way the slight jerkiness of the stop-motion echoes the characters' inability to articulate their own feelings; there's a disconnect between what they want to express and what actually comes out, and I'm sure we've all felt like this at various points in our life. Heck, maybe it's this that gives the film the heart I've always felt Anderson's films have rather lacked.
It hasn't hurt, of course, that the cast number some of Hollywood's most eminently loveable performers. Step forward George Clooney, of course, but huge credit also has to go to Meryl Streep, whose Mrs. Fox provides the film's moral compass. My personal favourite, however, was my perpetual personal favourite Jason Schwartzman, playing sulky tweenager Ash as a gleeful portrait of quite how awful kids can be at that age and a reminder of how not all sensitive outsiders are beautiful on the inside.
At its core, however, Fantastic Mr. Fox is a film about being true to oneself. Granted, this is a common enough message, but it's usually presented in a rather more simplistic way: you're perfect the way you are, so don't try to hide it. Fox, on the other hand, offers a more interesting take, something more like you probably can't change your inner self but it'll probably get you into trouble sooner or later, so if you really feel the need to express it, for cuss' sake be sneaky about it.
The bad
I'm really loath to criticise this one, but unfortunately it does fall into a couple of common traps that need addressing, both of which are so common I've long grown sick of thinking and writing about them.
First off, I can understand the desire to cast Michael Gambon as your main villain. Let's face it, nobody gives better villain than Gambon, and his performance here is as slickly spiteful as anything he's done since The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. Unfortunately, he's the antagonist to a group of protagonists with exclusively American accents, and we're back to that tired old perfidious Albion trope that really should have died out a good couple of decades ago.
There's also the question of the film's female characters - they're relatively few in number compared to the males, and they're all in such conventional roles. There's the loving mother, the dedicated paediatrician, the secretary and the accountant in their smart office gear, and none of them have even the tiniest spark of mischief or malice about them. This is a film that actively embraces the flaws in human nature (animal nature?) but with the exception of Bean's one-joke myopic wife, the female characters are all patient, maternal and endlessly but wearily tolerant of the little boys of all ages that inhabit their lives.
The verdict
I kind of wish I hadn't written about this one today, if only because by acknowledging its flaws for the first time I'm going to find them harder to ignore on subsequent viewings. Still, this is a beautiful, unusual piece of filmmaking, and one that I can (almost) wholeheartedly recommend.
