Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox is one of the most inanimate animated movies ever made. The disconnect between its images and its soundtrack is so complete as to be disorienting. And heaven only knows whether anyone under the age of sixteen will be able to make sense of it.
 But it is also a terrific movie that delights at every turn. I'm not sure the fellows at Pixar and DreamWorks can or ought to learn anything from watching it, but audiences can and should gasp over it.
The story (loosely—very loosely—based on the children's book by Roald Dahl) concerns a foxy paterfamilias whose attacks on the neighboring farms provoke maddened, escalating counterattacks by the injured farmers. Dahl took this conceit and built a slender little quasi–folk tale on it; but Anderson has deepened and complicated it by giving the Fox family a drolly understated set of neuroses and psychological complexes, and made the story about them. So in his movie Mr. Fox is a newspaper columnist who gave up his life of crime at the behest of his wife. But as he contemplates his own mortality he decides to stage one last series of raids on the three horrible farmers who live next door. Meanwhile, his two-year-old son (that's twelve years in fox terms, as the movie helpfully explains) comes down with a world-class inferiority complex when his younger-but-taller, effortlessly cool and athletic younger cousin moves in with them. (This cousin has unspoken anguishes of his own; his father is perishing of double pneumonia, which, in the words of one character, amounts to having "one foot in the grave and the other three on banana peels.") The farmers still retaliate, and there is still an underground chase as the foxes try to outdig the pursuing farmers. But Anderson has added a third act to the story that features extracurricular raids that go awry, daring rescues, and an all-out battle in the local village.
The first thing to note is that this is not a DreamWorks-style extravaganza of shrieking gargoyles, extravagant-but-clichéd "wild takes," and wall-to-wall pop culture references. Hardly anyone in the picture speaks above a quiet monotone, and their expressions are so sedate that they hardly register. Dialogue is understated and allusive, and punctuated by the occasional luxuriantly ornate soliloquy. Every character in the picture (except for a bullying muskrat and an opossum who may have a brain injury) is very smart and isn't afraid to use his or her brain, so there are no obvious cases of plot-induced idiocy. It is a movie of very wry and understated intelligence.
It is also very stylized. Though made with three-dimensional models and set in a world that has depth as well as height and width, almost all movement is done in two dimensions—up and down, and side to side—so that you hardly get a sense of anything being in front of or behind anything else. Camera work is also very static: Anderson prefers to cut between close ups, medium shots, and panoramic shots, and his camera, when it moves, simply tracks alongside characters who are moving in a straight line. The effect—which is nearly magical but possibly not to all tastes—is of a storybook illustration come to life.
 The feeling that you are watching animated illustrations, rather than an animated movie, is heightened by the disconnect between the images and the soundtrack. The performances (led by George Clooney and Meryl Streep) are warm and rich and intimate, brimming with life; the puppets, on the other hand, are so underdeveloped that not for a moment do you believe that these words are coming out of those characters. The effect, frankly, is far closer to Adult Swim shows like Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Sealab 2021: brilliantly written radio plays over which animated images have been laid. The pictures are beautiful and often very witty, but you could probably close your eyes and just listen to the actors and still get 90% of what the movie has on offer.
It's also not much of a movie for children. I don't mean that there is anything inappropriate in it. The violence, like everything else, is very muted, and there are no curse words. (Amusingly, every obscenity has been literally replaced by the word "cuss": "What the cuss?" "Are you cussing with me?" "Don't give me any cuss.") And there is nothing wrong with stretching a child's brain, like taffy, by giving them chewy and demanding material like this. But this is a movie whose tonalities and themes and execution are definitely pitched at an adult audience, and except for the wonderfully buffoonish farmers there's not a lot here for anyone ten or under.
Hollywood makes two types of movies: pop movies for mass audiences, and art movies for the indie crowd. Animated movies have almost exclusively been of the former type. Fantastic Mr. Fox is the first mainstream animated movie I can think of that feels like it was consciously designed as an art film. It hasn't the visual eccentricity or avant-garde strangeness of (let us say) Bill Plympton's work. But it is avant-garde in its own way: Who would ever think you could make a stop-motion comedy-drama that crosses the plot of Ocean's Eleven with the mannered absurdism of O Brother, Where Art Thou? Don't be too shocked when you go to see it.
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