Directed by: Wes Anderson
Starring: George Clooney, Willem Dafoe, Jason Schwartzman, Meryl Streep, Wally Wolodarsky
Rating: PG

A scene from Fantastic Mr. Fox. (Courtesy photo)

In all, Fantastic Mr. Fox isn’t quite a great movie. What it boasts in visual imagination and aural cleverness, it lacks in genuine emotion and disciplined structure. Fantastic Mr. Fox does, however, continue a very exciting trend in family movies this year. Besides another mainstream piece of joy from Pixar (Up) and another minor masterpiece from Miyazaki (Ponyo), Sony Animation offered the flat-out best comedy of the year (Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs), and Spike Jonze gave us the most ambitious family movie in years (Where the Wild Things Are). Fox may not quite measure up to those films, but it’s a very respectable fifth.

Director Wes Anderson, like Jonze and Mayazaki, isn’t content to make the kind of bland, easily digestible kid movies that usually clog up theaters these days (Ice Age 3, Shorts, Planet 51). And because of that he will lose a fair amount of viewers. Fox is whimsical and gently daring—far less intense than Wild Things or Up. If only Anderson and co-screenwriter Noah Baumbach had committed to the emotional journeys of their characters. Oh, the arcs are there—plotted out and grudgingly, almost apologetically, delivered. But like two kids who love their little construction too much to share it with their siblings, Anderson and Baumbach won’t quite give over to audience needs.

Mr. Fox (voiced by George Clooney) used to be an expert barnyard thief. Since Mrs. Fox (Meryl Streep) had their child, Ash (Jason Schwartzman), he’s tried to get by as a newspaper columnist. But as old human nemeses Boggis, Bunce, and Bean increasingly enlarge their farm operations, Fox’s old nature returns. He recruits his possum landlord, Kylie (Wally Wolodarsky), and secretly goes on the hunt again. After some fun thievery, Fox is exposed to wife and son. Worse, the farmers team up and start destroying the land for all animals. Fox must find a way to defeat the farmers once and for all.

Roald Dahl’s original novella is as dark as most of his work, with a cat-and-mouse second half that’s surprisingly adaptable to film. Anderson and Baumbach make some smart choices in expanding the story, introducing cousin Kristopherson, whose natural abilities threaten the already fragile Ash. But their expansion calls for a new third act that feels anti-climactic compared to their mid-movie triumph. One of Anderson’s tricks in his directing career has been to transform typical action scenes—the heist and chase in Bottle Rocket, the shootout in The Life Aquatic, the barnyard raids here. In his earlier films they usually worked. This time Anderson plays too coyly against convention. We enjoy plenty of little delights, but no big ones.

Anderson does put together a crackerjack voice cast, though. Not surprisingly, Clooney and Streep are great. Schwartzman (Funny People, Bored to Death) is a savvy choice for 12-year-old Ash. Willem Dafoe is terrific and unrecognizable as a villainous rat. But the show-stealer is writer-director-producer-sometime actor Wally Wolodarski as Kylie. Anderson wisely has everyone (except Dafoe) use their own voices, and it turns out the sweetly nasal Wolodarsky was born for this stuff.

Fantastic Mr. Fox did not find a large audience during the Thanksgiving weekend. But I suspect over the next few years it will build a devoted following. Unlike this year’s Coraline, which was neither genuine stop-motion nor genuinely original-looking, Fox really does have a visual style all its own. As in most Anderson films, style again wins out over strong storytelling, but not to the point of keeping Fantastic Mr. Fox from being a special family movie.

Alex Manugian lives in Sherman Oaks, Calif. He grew up in Groton and has reviewed movies for Harvard readers for many years.