The PetsitUSA Blog

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

The PetsitUSA Blog

Posted: 05 Apr 2010 10:06 PM PDT

I was pleasantly surprised by Fantastic Mr. Fox. I wasn’t familiar with the book by Roald Dahl, so I had no idea what the movie was going to be like. I was expecting it to be another cutesy little kid movie but that’s definitely not the case. There’s plenty of action that will keep kids interested, but it has a bit of a dark feel to it that adults will enjoy, too. It’s filmed in stop motion animation, which is a nice change from the usual animation. The animation, story, characters, and music worked together to make a truly entertaining movie.

When his wife tells Mr. Fox she’s pregnant, he agrees to give up his wild ways but alas, the call of the wild is too much for him to deny. Mr. Fox secretly plans one last raid which involves chickens, cider, turkeys, and more adventure than he had in mind. Like a lot of good stories though, there’s trouble. In Mr. Fox’s case it comes in the form of the meanest farmers around – Boggis, Bunce and Bean. They’re determined to catch Mr. Fox come cuss or high water.

The cast includes George Clooney (Mr. Fox), Meryl Streep (Mrs. Fox), Wallace Wolodarsky (Kylie), and Jason Schwartzman (Ash).

Besides the movie, the DVD has extras, including:

From Script to Screen – Comments from the people who took the story from the pages of a book and turned into the movie
Puppet Animation – A behind the scenes look at how the animation was made. You’ll see how the puppets were meticulously positioned one frame at a time.
Beginners Guide to Whack Bat – A short instructional piece on how to play the game played by Ash and Kristofferson.
The theatrical trailer

Fantastic Mr. Fox (Three-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo + Digital Copy) is available from Amazon.

(I was provided with a copy of the movie for review purposes).