What do you get when you combine stop-motion animation and anthropomorphic animals? Something up Wes Anderson’s alley apparently. Yes the director known for his unique directing style filled with bright colors and really REALLY dry humor has finally stepped out of his box.
Rather than directing a completely unique movie that he has crafted from the ground up, Wes Anderson has been directing a movie based on Roald Dahl’s book the Fantastic Mr Fox. Even stranger still, it’s done entirely in stop motion animation.
The film was originally supposed to be directed by Nightmare Before Christmas director Henry Selick, who had to leave to direct Coraline. Anderson picked up the movie having worked with Selick for some segments in his movie The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.
There have been simple pictures here and there on the movie, with some being better than others. Rumors on a release of the trailer have said it would come out with Ice Age 2, or Up.
After no sign of the trailer for quite a while, Yahoo debuted the trailer for this new movie. The result is somewhat hit and miss. The style is very clearly Anderson’s, but I’m still hesitant about the movie.
The animation studio has seemed to have done a good job with managing the fur on the characters so each frame doesn’t have jumping fur, but the main characters seem to have the tendency to lack emotion or have some really strange subtle movements.
The casting is good, but not really new for Anderson. Bill Murray, Owen Wilson and Jason Schwartzman, almost staple actors for his movies. The casting of George Clooney is probably to calm the studio, but the choice seems particularly strange. It works in a few moments, and then doesn’t work others in the trailer. Hopefully it’s not as weird in the full movie.
The film looks good though. The video had quite a few good laughs, and I can only hope the full movie has even more. See the trailer for yourself.
So where’s Falco, Slippy, and Peppy?
Slippy’s doing Budweiser commercials, Peppy’s waiting until easter, and Falco is hoping to land a roll in a Fruit Loops Commercial.