Fox Fights Mid-life Crisis by Attacking Henhouse: Fantastic Mr Fox
Fantastic Mr Fox
Dir: Wes Anderson
Mr Fox, a fox, has given up his youthful exploits as a wild animal and thief in a foxhole, and become a law-abiding husband and father. Dressed in a double-breasted corduroy suit, and living in the English countryside, he is content writing unread columns for the newspaper and talking about real estate prices. But when his athletic and popular nephew Kristofferson moves in with them — making Fox’s son Ash feel inadequate and jealous — Fox yearns again for his adventurous youth. He decides (despite Mrs Fox’s warnings) to revive his days as a thief for one last grand heist, and starts a series of raids on the hen houses of the three behemoth corporate farms on the hills facing his tree-house. The evil farmers, Bunce, Boggis, and Bean, form a team to combat the foxes, and the meanest of the three, Boggis, captures Fox’s tail. The farmers want to destroy all the animals, while the animals — foxes, badgers, rabbits — just want to live in peace. And Fox wants his tail back. As Bugs Bunny said to Yosemite Sam, this means war: the animals with American accents vs. the very English farmers. (In most U.S. movies, villains are easy to spot by their “foreign” accents.)
Director Wes Anderson has been on a downward spiral. After the very good Bottle Rocket (1996) and the great Rushmore (1998) came the lamely annoying The Royal Tenenbaums (2002) and the barely watchable The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) I had just about given up going to his movies. But now comes Fantastic Mr Fox, his exciting, funny, and beautifully made stop-motion, animated version of Roald Dahl’s famous children’s book. It is a very enjoyable movie done in a retro, homemade-looking manner. He avoids ugly computer animation instead favouring a more rustic, 70’s style. The characters have glassily expressive eyes, the grass and fields are comfortably misshapen and imperfect, and the animals’ fur is nice and messy. Even fire and water are ingeniously made from solid parts. It’s an altogether great-looking movie, with lots of visual gags, likable characters (even a villainous, west-side-story rat) and the interesting plot turns, chase scenes, and explosions that delight kids and adults.
Tucker Max’s I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. Revenge of the Jocks?
Tucker Max’s I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
Dir: Bob Gosse
Tucker Max (Matt Czuchry) takes his two sidekicks, Drew (Jesse Bradford) and Dan (Geoff Stults) on a drive to a faraway strip bar for a bachelor’s party the night before Dan’s wedding. They get drunk, act like boors, break things, and insult women while ogling their breasts. The End.
Is it funny to watch a rich, privileged, southern, white, good ol’ boy and his buddies enjoy the good life at the expense of everyone else? Not particularly. Is it unusual for someone like Tucker Max (the man, not the character) to enjoy describing his pick-ups and sex life in detail on a blog (www.tuckermax.com)? Unfortunately not.
In fact, is there anything, anything at all, distinctive or worthwhile about such a patently offensive movie? Maybe a little. It has a few very funny lines, and there’s an engaging round of competitive insults between the abusive, depressed gamer Drew and a smart stripper; and affable acting by the actor playing Tucker Max. But on the whole, jokes with audaciousness but no irony — humour that takes the side of the bullies instead of the underdogs — quickly begin to grate. Ten-minute potty jokes are better written down than shown. It’s supposed to be funny when he happily tosses bills off a wad of cash to get poor people to do unpleasant things for him. And you do laugh at the awfulness of his mindset. But it’s not meant to be self-deprecating; you’re supposed to think of him as a hero for his unparalleled honesty.
Tucker Max is touring the continent with campus previews of his film (earlier this week at Innis College, University of Toronto) and surprisingly he attracts as many female fans as males. His Q&A this week after the screening was funnier than the movie — he’s a good stand-up comic. But he’s the type of guy who gets his laughs by insulting insecure students in the audience: “I liked you in Harold and Kumar, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.” The most surprising thing about Tucker Max may be the fact that he doesn’t get beaten up.
Where the Wild Things Aren’t Wild
Where the Wild Things Are
Dir: Spike Jonze
Max (Max Records), a boy who lives with his mother (Catherine Keener) and sister, likes to run around in an animal suit, growling and burrowing. He runs away after he breaks some things, messes up his house and bites his mother. Max sails across the ocean to an island where the wild things are. The wild things are scary-looking Pufnstuf-sized animated monster-puppets who live in cool huts of woven twigs. They crown Max as their new king so he can solve all their problems. Their goal is to stop fighting and breaking things, and to join together in a warm and furry eternal group hug.
I really wanted to like this movie. It’s written by Dave Eggers, the experimental (though over-rated) creative novelist, directed by the interesting (though over-rated) video and movie director Spike Jonze, and based on the amazing children’s book by the fantastical (and under-rated) children’s illustrator and writer Maurice Sendak.
Unfortunately, the movie sucked. It was unbearably boring and slow, with a painfully obvious plot, and an inexplicably drawn-out pace designed to suck the life out of even the most dazzling scenes. Who can enjoy a movie like this? It can’t be made for kids, since there’s no suspense and almost nothing happens. It can’t be made for grown-ups, since the simplistic dialogue is like a whiney self-help power point presentation. The monsters, while initially scary, are quickly revealed to be a set of aging stoner hippie-monsters living in a failed commune with their ADD kids and drop-out emo teens.
This may be the first escapist movie that panders specifically to kids’ parents. Not to kids and not to adults, nor even to adults who remember loving Sendak’s lush jungle fantasy as a kid. It’s only aimed at parents of wild kids who just wish for some peace and quiet.
Coco Chanel: the surly years
Coco before Chanel (Coco avant Chanel)
Dir: Anne Fontaine
In an old house in France,
all covered with vines
Lived 12 little girls
in two straight lines.
Little Gabrielle Chanel, dressed in stern grey and white, grows up in a Catholic orphanage run by nuns wearing black and white habits. She spends the rest of the movie trying to make French women lose their flouncy, feathered hats and red dresses, and dress more simply, just like at the orphanage.
Coco before Chanel covers the early stages of the career of the successful, self-made French designer. Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel (Audrey Tautou) — nicknamed for a dancehall number about a little dog that she performs in a bar with her sister Adrienne — wants to rise up from her humble origins. She tries valiantly to launch her career by becoming the mistress of Count Balsan (Benoît Poelvoorde), a rich dilettante, and Boy Capel (Allesandro Nivola), a French-speaking, upper-class Englishman. She shows her independence by smoking cigarettes, riding horses in men’s breaches, and pouting and sulking amid her rich friends’ decadence. In between parties, she chops frilly lace off of gaudy dresses, flings whalebone corsets to the floor, and makes tiny black dresses to wear to the ball — paving the way for French women to be free from loud clothes.
But the movie is over by the time she’s made the transition from rags to riches, leaving out the really interesting parts of her life that followed. I would have liked to have seen the years she spent shacked up in the Ritz with her high-ranked Nazi lover in occupied Paris; or the aftermath, where she was forced to flee France in disgrace for her war crimes. Instead, the movie tiptoes gingerly from the rebellious young woman to the rehabilitated grande dame. See this movie if you enjoy looking at costumes, horses, stately mansions and old furniture. But if you’re looking for an exciting story, don’t look here.
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