Fantastic Mr. Fox was wonderful. So creative and charming and fun, as well as beautiful to watch.
I argued briefly with Amir after watching it, since he claimed that “kids would not like it” and “You shouldn’t criticize movies like ‘Tooth Fairy’ because they’re made for kids, and kids have more fun watching stupid movies.” I could not possibly disagree more. Just because people - kids included - have been proven to enjoy the lowest common denominator does not make it okay to condescend to them with stupidity.
Films like Up, Aladdin, Ratatouille and Fantastic Mr. Fox are brilliant because they don’t assume that kids (and, as a result, adults) are retards. You should no more say “Kids’ movies have a right to be stupid, they’re kids’ movies” than you should say the same about action movies or big-budget family comedies. No! It shouldn’t ever be okay to be treated like an idiot.
Unrelated: this movie reminds me to go back and read every Roald Dahl book again.
I was going to say how I won’t be watching this movie, for the sole reason being that the animals look like the taxidermic versions of their real selves. I was going to then liken this technique to making a weird movie starring a lifeless human carcass going on capers and generally being mischievous. Then I was going to end on how much a stupid, creepy idea that was, and how much of a failure the concept is… then it occurred to me that I was describing Weekend At Bernie’s.
