Far-fetched Mr Fox

Hello, bookworms! What's this? SON has posted TWICE in less than two weeks??? Again, I would ask you all to refrain from passing out until AFTER you have read and - all importantly - COMMENTED on this post :)
Hey there to my two new followers, by the way! Barbara, Sir Lipine and Ashywashy - be nice to them. ;)
Don't forget about the nagging principle, guys. Remember, nagging + procrastination = motivation + results!
So finally, I have the review for 'Fantastic Mr. Fox', dedicated to my awesome brother Sir Lipine the Awesome. Please forgive me, Sir Lipine, for taking so long! It was the homework's fault!
Getting down to business, when I heard this movie was coming out, I was very excited. 'Fantastic Mr. Fox' happens to be my favourite Roald Dahl book of all time, right from when my mum read it to my siblings and I when we were very young as a bedtime story. The story is a delightful, fun tale full of adventure and mischief. The 'bad guys' (Boggis, Bunce and Bean) are truly awful and hideous in every sense of the word. The book is indeed a great pleasure to read, which I rediscovered when reading it for research.
"But how does the movie compare to the book?" you ask. That is a very good question. Allow me to do my best to answer it:

Overall position of the film:

Look, I'll be frank here straight away. The movie is nothing like the book. At best, you could say it was loosely based on the book. If you're looking for a film that captures the essence of 'Fantastic Mr.Fox', don't watch it. If, however, you want to watch a quirky movie that doesn't really have much of a point, go right ahead and see it. I did sort of like it, despite it being really weird. And Sir Lipine loved it. But I was also quite disappointed because I did not at all see Roald Dahl's story on the screen.

Plot:

Unfortunately, the plot is not really based at all on the book. Rather than following the daring exploits of Fantastic Mr. Fox as he gives those mean farmers what they deserve, the film follows the story of an average fox going through a midlife crisis (now you see why 'far-fetched' was in the title) who thinks he has to go back to the old excitement of stealing poultry from high-security farms to make himself feel complete. Roald Dahl's solution to the problem of the three mean farmers was ignored, and instead the filmmakers try to invent a complicated plot which is, put nicely, hardly genius.

Characters:

Bean- If you have read the book, you will know just how absolutely disgusting Farmer Bean is. If you have not, let me quote a passage to you:

Bean never took a bath. He never even washed. As a result, his earholes were clogged with all kinds of muck and wax and bits of chewing gum and dead flies and stuff like that. This made him deaf. [...] Bean rubbed the back of his neck with a dirty finger. He had a boil coming there and it itched.

See what I mean? Absolutely disgusting. Roald Dahl truly has a gift for creating the most loathsome characters in children's literature. In the movie, unfortunately, bean is not nearly as revolting as in the book. He's somewhat mean, and sort of tall, but by no means ridiculous. The beauty of Roald Dahl's bad guys is that they are ridiculous, and hideously so. Farmer Bean in the film was far too ordinary.

Bunce and Boggis- The film was quite strange in that it quoted the book more than I have ever seen in a film, yet it deviated from the book drastically. When introducing the farmers, Badger (who is a lawyer in the film - go figure) quotes directly from the book what they are like, how Boggis is extremely fat, Bunce is extremely short, and Bean is extremely tall and lean. Again, even though the film introduced them with the same words the book did, their disgusting personalities didn't really shine through and they just seemed like grumpy old men rather than ridiculously mean farmers.

Mr. Fox- I hate to have to say this, but Mr. Fox was hardly as fantastic, dashing, ingenious and heroic as Mr. Fox was in the book. As mentioned in the plot summary above, he's a fox going through a midlife crisis which, put nicely, is stupid, pointless and unrealistic, as he is a FOX. Okay, so maybe it's unrealistic for a fox to be noble and smart, as Dahl wrote Mr. Fox, but hey, it's a kid's book, and you're allowed to do that sort of stuff. This movie, however, wasn't really aimed at kids. I'm not saying that it's an adult movie or anything, but most of the (terrible) humour and (unoriginal) storyline would have gone straight over an eight year-old's head. Back to talking about Mr. Fox, though, the biggest problem I had with him was that I didn't really like him. He's the protagonist, everyone's supposed to love him! Instead, he was an ordinary, selfish fox who risked the lives of his family to have a bit of excitement. The filmmakers failed miserably in bringing Fantastic Mr. Fox to life.

Ash- Now, in the book, Mr. Fox has four adorable little cubs (is that the right word for a baby fox? Correct me if I'm wrong) who are just as thoughtful and smart as their father. Did we get this in the movie? No. Instead, we get Ash, Mr. Fox's only son, who is moody and selfish and just plain WEIRD. I am especially annoyed that they called him Ash, because I personally quite like the name Ash, and this just ruins it. I personally think that far too much glory is given to Ash in the film, because all the characters are telling Mr. Fox to accept his son, even though he is 'different'. Well, Ash isn't so much different as he is RUDE to everyone around him, and instead of just making an excuse that being rude is part of Ash's 'different' personality, I would say that Mr. Fox needs to teach his son some manners and stop being so selfish.

Other Characters- None of the other characters are really worth mentioning, all you need to know is that not one of them is the way they are in the books. Even the Rat has been changed in a pathetic character arc that the filmmakers really shouldn't have bothered with.

Themes:

This really is one of the strangest films I've ever seen when it comes to themes. Every time you think someone is going to make a point, they don't, and what they say end up being just like the movie as a whole: pointless. Overall, there really aren't that many themes to discuss. I suppose you could perhaps squeeze the theme of family in there, in how Mr. Fox comes to appreciate his family a little bit more, but really that is a weak theme that barely shows through the film. When it comes to it, to be honest, the movie actually doesn't have really have anything to say.

Messages:

Ditto the themes- there were none. :'(

Setting:

Nothing particularly special about the scenery, it was really quite average. Not once in the film did I think, "Wow, that place is exactly how I imagined it in the book!", and nothing really stood out.

Animation:

This film was made using stop animation with puppets. Overall, the picture at times wasn't as smooth as, say, a Wallace and Grommit movie, but seeing as at some points in production the animators were shooting 25 scenes at a time, the process was quite genius. The animators came up with a whole new program that enabled them to communicate with the director live, wherever he was, and for this I congratulate them. To see a video of how they did this, click here.

Music:

The music matched the movie, in that it was somewhat quirky but really rather boring. However, there was one theme in the music I really loved, which was children singing:

"Boggis, Bunce and Bean,

One fat, one short, one lean.

These horrible crooks, so different in looks,

Are none the less equally mean."

which was a rhyme in the novel that the children sang, so I thought that was quite fitting in the soundtrack. Apart from that small song, though, the music was nothing special.

Things I hated about the film:

• The characters (particularly Mr. Fox, Ash, and Farmer Bean
• The plot, which the filmmakers completely destroyed
• The lack of themes to discuss
• The overall pointlessness of the film
• It was BORING

Things I didn't mind about the film:

• The animation was okay
• The children's rhyme was cool
• Quoting the book in many places was good (it would have been even better if they

Overall:

The root of all the problems in this film was that the filmmakers completely disregarded the novel and basically marred it until it was almost unrecognisable. If they had any respect for the book, they would have seen it for the pure genius it was and tried to make the film as close to the book as possible. I realise that with any book-to-film adaptation, some changes are going to be made, but this is just pitiful. Fantastic Mr. Fox is such a wonderful novel, and it hurts me to see that so little effort went into preserving the original story. I would advise all bookworms who listen to my opinion (you are few and far between) not to watch this film, and if you are unfortunate enough to see it, watch it as a quirky movie with no point rather than an adaptation of Fantastic Mr. Fox. I don't like to be this scathing, but if you want good reviews from nerds such as myself, you're going to have to make good adaptations of my favourite books.

Signing off,
~SON

Don't forget to comment!!!