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Wes Anderson gets his eccentric groove back on with a witty and likeable movie for little kids and their hip older siblings. It’s a demi-Americanised, wholly Andersonised version of the 1970 Roald Dahl children’s tale Fantastic Mr Fox, all about an elegant furry rapscallion pulling off the chicken-chomping crime of the century against three apoplectic farmers.

In a world where kids’ movies are generally presented in hi-tech 3D digital wonderment, Anderson defiantly presents his one in old-school stop-motion animation, making it look like something by Oliver Postgate or Jan Svankmajer. He even gets the fronds on his foxy heroes and heroines’ faces to stir and bristle in a style which for traditional animators was accidental – with the models being repositioned for each frame – but which for Anderson is a deliberate mannerism.

With co-writer Noah Baumbach, Anderson has created a movie with that oddball quality that I associate with both him and Michael Gondry: a quirky-homespun aesthetic with a meticulous foregrounding of knowing detail. He takes the story of the Fox clan and their battle against three agribusiness villains – Boggis, Bunce and Bean – and reimagines this feisty family as exactly the sort of amiably dysfunctional yet pin-smart bunch that he depicted in The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. Read more

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