It's currently the highest rated new release last I checked on Metacritic besides that Football movie , it's based on a Roald Dahl book, and it's hand-crafted stop motion. I figured I couldn't lose.
I went through the whole movie with a sort of slack-jawed grin chuckling or tee-heeing through the whole thing. Oh God, it was great. It's not a children's movie. It's clean, it's based on a children's book, it'a animated, it has an "All ages" rating, but it is definitely not a children's movie.
Whoever wrote the script wrote it so that they could cast George Clooney as George Clooney. Mr. Fox is a restless egotistical... well George Clooney. This movie just made me realize he always plays the exact same kind of character. Did you ever see O' Brother Where Art Though? If you haven't, shoot yourself in the foot for that and go see it. If that was George Clooney in The Odyssey then this is Clooney in the setting from a children's book.
The animation was great. It's stop motion like Wallace and Gromit, but much more detailed in some ways. It's a little awkward at first, a little rough in some parts partly due to the characters having a wire skeleton, and some scenes were oddly stylized due to technical limitations, but the stop-motion animation was delightful. Absolutely delightful.
The music was damn near perfect, the big name actor voices, though odd to see with the animation at first, really pulled it together. Some of the sound effects sounded a little off or cheezier than they could have been, but it didn't bother me too much as it almost fit with the whole style of it.
The humor. Oh yes, the humor was perfect. I can't put my finger on it. I really can't accurately describe the humor. No really "Dur Hurr" kind of jokes, and no dirty humor by my standards. It was kind of dry, somewhat subtle, and very witty at times. I didn't even catch all of the funnies with my one viewing. The Men Who Stare at Goats is another Clooney movie with Clooney playing as Clooney, but the jokes in it were a bit too few and far between compared to this. I wouldn't recommend taking your kids to it as you would probably enjoy it more than they would just because of the style of humor.
The only really negative reviews of the movie I could find when I was trying to decide what to do with the 9$ burning a hole in my pocket complained about the occasional awkward animation parts (which were more often funny in a way than they were "bad"), the character development, and the plot. I haven't read the book (though I love all of Dahl's books I've read). As for the plot, it did kind of bounce around or suddenly change as the situations changed. For me, that's a plus. There were a few plot holes or errors (Like why didn't he ever just dig under the farms in the first place if it was so easy?) but they really didn't bother me and it was more airtight than some movies that did even better in the box office. As for the character development, I can see what they were getting at, but they just don't understand what George Clooney is. There's a point where he gets slapped by his crying wife and is told that the's going to get them all killed if he doesn't change his ways. Normal movie would have him change his ways and have some kind of lesson in it but this is George Clooney dammit. He's obsessed and overconfident which is what gets him into trouble in the first place, but the only way he fixes things is by trying harder and continuing what he's after only succeeding by pure charm, determination and some luck. In the case of O Brother Where Art Thou it was the same thing, but with an act of god that saved his bacon. Some reviews said there was a "mixed message" but honestly I enjoyed it too much to care about that. I suppose there was a sort of "Well, damn, I have you guys and after we were all nearly killed from my actions I suppose I should finally settle down and be happy" at the end.
...anyone else see this? Or am I just insane like usual?
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Topic: The Fantastic Mr. Clooney (Read 825 times)