Fantastic Mr. Fox (four stars total) A few years ago at Comic-Con, Quentin Tarantino did a Q & A panel with Robert Rodriguez and someone asked him when he was going to do a family film like Rodriguez.
Mr. Fox (2009) could've been that film, except it wasn't directed by Tarantino. It's a Wes Anderson film, but it has Tarantino's flare for dialogue ("cussing") and overall the soundtrack isn't as Anderson-y this time around (less Cat Stevens, more Beach Boys). The best description I can think of is a cross between
Chicken Run (2000),
Napoleon Dynamite (2004),
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000),
West Side Story (1961), and platform video games (for this last one, see the burrowing and chase scenes). I didn't like the look of the skinny Kermit the Frog arms and legs but
I loved the eating scenes, the lightning paintings and the binomial nomenclature (i.e. Latin animal names). My biggest complaint with book-to-film adaptations is that usually they add to while taking away. It's okay to add to without taking away (because the book was really short) or vice versa (because the book was really long), but I hate it when filmmakers swap their own scenes for those in the book. Wes Anderson did pull a swap with a visiting fox cousin all his own, but I agree with his choice to do some character development with an only child over cluttering his meticulous background scenery with a big fox family. Having Mrs. Fox get knocked up and making the apple cider alchoholic were also Anderson-isms but they didn't make for some black comedy that wasn't already there. I was shocked by Mr. Fox's tail getting shot off but that's actually straight out of the book.
The Princess and the Frog (four and a half stars total) is the movie that
The Haunted Mansion (2003) could've and should've been (Disney's Villains franchise might've included a bayou character years ago). It's got a pair of slimy main characters up against inbred Cajun poachers and a Voodoo witch doctor with a Gomez Addams moustache. It's far more Christmas than Halloween though, what with the star in the sky and the message about
family being the most important thing. There's another message about hard work, but after the Princess character's dream almost comes true in the first ten minutes of the movie, it calls into question the "glass ceiling" and the difference between blue collar and white collar work. What I got out of the movie is that there always were and always will be good white southerners and bad white southerners and you can't necessarily spot them by their clothes or houses. I can't believe that Disney makes fun of its own princess image, not just with the main character's name but especially with her stereotypically Disney princess of a blonde, childhood friend. It was so refreshing to see both "daddy's girls" stay friends through the end - no jealousy, no backbiting, no fighting over a guy. It was so refreshing to see hand-drawn animation again - especially the sparkes and psychadelic parts that paid homage to some painter (maybe Toulouse-Lautrec?). It was so refreshing to hear different styles of music - blues, Dixieland jazz, gospel and zydeco. I followed up on my movie screening with some red beans and rice from Popeye's. It sure beat Ne-Yo's song over the end credits.
Fantastic Mr. Fox (four stars total) A few years ago at Comic-Con, Quentin Tarantino did a Q & A panel with Robert Rodriguez and someone asked him when he was going to do a family film like Rodriguez. Mr. Fox (2009) could've been that film, except it wasn't directed by Tarantino. It's a Wes Anderson film, but it has Tarantino's flare for dialogue ("cussing") and overall the soundtrack isn't as Anderson-y this time around (less Cat Stevens, more Beach Boys). The best description I can think of is a cross between Chicken Run (2000), Napoleon Dynamite (2004), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), West Side Story (1961), and platform video games (for this last one, see the burrowing and chase scenes). I didn't like the look of the skinny Kermit the Frog arms and legs but I loved the eating scenes, the lightning paintings and the binomial nomenclature (i.e. Latin animal names). My biggest complaint with book-to-film adaptations is that usually they add to while taking away. It's okay to add to without taking away (because the book was really short) or vice versa (because the book was really long), but I hate it when filmmakers swap their own scenes for those in the book. Wes Anderson did pull a swap with a visiting fox cousin all his own, but I agree with his choice to do some character development with an only child over cluttering his meticulous background scenery with a big fox family. Having Mrs. Fox get knocked up and making the apple cider alchoholic were also Anderson-isms but they didn't make for some black comedy that wasn't already there. I was shocked by Mr. Fox's tail getting shot off but that's actually straight out of the book.
The Princess and the Frog (four and a half stars total) is the movie that The Haunted Mansion (2003) could've and should've been (Disney's Villains franchise might've included a bayou character years ago). It's got a pair of slimy main characters up against inbred Cajun poachers and a Voodoo witch doctor with a Gomez Addams moustache. It's far more Christmas than Halloween though, what with the star in the sky and the message about family being the most important thing. There's another message about hard work, but after the Princess character's dream almost comes true in the first ten minutes of the movie, it calls into question the "glass ceiling" and the difference between blue collar and white collar work. What I got out of the movie is that there always were and always will be good white southerners and bad white southerners and you can't necessarily spot them by their clothes or houses. I can't believe that Disney makes fun of its own princess image, not just with the main character's name but especially with her stereotypically Disney princess of a blonde, childhood friend. It was so refreshing to see both "daddy's girls" stay friends through the end - no jealousy, no backbiting, no fighting over a guy. It was so refreshing to see hand-drawn animation again - especially the sparkes and psychadelic parts that paid homage to some painter (maybe Toulouse-Lautrec?). It was so refreshing to hear different styles of music - blues, Dixieland jazz, gospel and zydeco. I followed up on my movie screening with some red beans and rice from Popeye's. It sure beat Ne-Yo's song over the end credits.
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