Witty banter? Check. Overeducated characters? Check. A pungent yet brilliant aura of elitism? Double check. Yep, it’s a Wes Anderson film, no matter if he replaces oddball human characters for stop-motion animation. This is a filmmaker who waves his flaws like banner, and you know what? God bless him. He dances on the razor-thin line between pretense and stupidity and half the time gets sliced in half. But there are times when his brand of arrogant filmmaking actually works. In that sense, Fantastic Mr. Fox works and works well.

Based on the Ronld Dahl children’s book, Mr. Fox (voiced by George Clooney) is a reformed chicken thief who turns over a new leaf when he finds out that his wife (Meryl Streep) is pregnant. Becoming a news reporter and family man, he decides to move his family into a tree overlooking three farms with three of the meanest farmers in the land. Feeling domestic suffocation happening after his nephew (Eric Anderson) arrives, he convinces his best friend Possum to join him in raiding one of the farms for it’s chickens. The thrill of it all then has him going out and doing it again and again, finally making the farmers aware and furious. What happens next not only affects himself, but his family, friends and neighbors.

While Anderson does a lot of deviating from the original Dahl classic, he does seem to keep the wonder of Mr. Fox and his friends as well as the underground world they make for themselves. He has the animal characters dressed as though they were 50s New York while they are plotted next to a British village in what might be the 1970s. The above-ground world looks dreary and forbidding while only slightly hostile. The world underground does look rather dirty but also fun and interesting. The character models don’t have the usual polish of more recent animation techniques involving clay, it’s rough edges give it a charm that I think is needed to keep the pretense from lifting this story out of reach.

But story-wise, Fantastic Mr. Fox is definitely lacking emotional payoff because of it’s pretentious dialogue and self-congratulation in showing just how smart it is. But unlike The Darjeeling Limited, Anderson wisely understood that this story isn’t supposed to have emotional payoff. We cannot relate to foxes or possums and therefore don’t even try. Just keep us interested in what happens to them and we’ll go along for the ride. And the one-liners are very good here. I

t’s always fun to see an animated film blocked and shot pretty much like a Wes Anderson picture. Being the first, I hope this isn’t the last. I would love to see Anderson take a whack at Dr. Seuss. Could you see him doing The Lorax? The photography is fun and unique and playful at times. I love how trains will come an go on the horizon for no apparent reason. And I love how the end of the film leaves on a slightly happy, is still ambiguous note.

And yet I find myself thinking about this film along with another film I saw the same day, Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist, and just how both films are connected to each other in ways that are slightly disturbing (not to mention Willem Defoe’s small role as Rat the Rat). Both are handling the ideas of nature vs. restraint and roles placed by social norms. Fox doesn’t want to stop hunting because it’s in his nature, but his wife demands that he does. When he and the great Badger (Bill Murray in his best voice role ever) argue, their animal natures take over and they start hissing and clawing. Mr. Fox was not designed for this life, but is trapped and tries to make the best of it.

All in all, Fantastic Mr. Fox is not really a kids movie. I think some might like it and the physical humor might catch on, but most of the real humor is targeted towards older kids and grown-ups. And that’s perfectly fine. I love movies like Up, but sometimes it’s nice to see a maturity in animation. It goes down like chilled alcoholic cider and a fine stolen goose leg.