Best Films of the 2000s: Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) | The Best Films of 2000s: This Guy Over Here

Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)

Starring: (voices) George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman
Director: Wes Anderson
Country: USA
Genre: Animation, Adventure

The wonderfully amazing Fantastic Mr. Fox is an awesomely brilliant dose of excitement.

2009 seems to be the year that a lot of directors are answering to their inner child as they delve into more childlike films, and thank goodness, (though let’s be honest and admit that neither this nor Where The Wild Things Are are children films.) Wes Anderson’s stop-motion animation flick is anything but conventional. It’s so inventive in fact, that I often felt awestruck watching it, in a way that I really hadn’t since I was a young’n and saw the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, (does that date me?) Anderson uses his specific theatrical directorial style to its full extent, squeezing out every minutia of humor, adventure, and even drama. I’m beginning to realize that calling a film like this “brave” for not hiding elements of real life from kids, (like cussing, pregnancy, death, and even *gasp* smoking!) is silly. It’s just common sense. Fantastic Mr. Fox is just so much fun, and fulfills that gap in adventure films that will unlock creativity in children as they plot out their own schematics in their playtime.

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