Pop quiz! Which month is associated with falling leaves, the transition month into winter, its name is shown at the bottom left corner of each page in our paper, and is objectively the best month? DING DING DING! It is in fact October. While, sadly, I won’t spend this entire article talking about my love for fall and all of the activities again, (see last month’s article for that), there are still some things to go through why I picked this month to review Fantastic Mr. Fox.
October is known as National Book month, which is the perfect time of year as the weather is changing. There are some people who are considered readers and can easily get invested in books, especially those in our Journalism class, but I can never visualize it the way intended. I always get stuck on pages, struggling to visualize the scene through the words only. So, it may be ironic in a way to review a movie based on the book on National Book Month, but hey, those who enjoy reading can enjoy the book as much as I enjoy this movie, despite some differences between the two.
Fantastic Mr. Fox is a 2009 stop-motion film directed by Wes Anderson, based on the book written by Roald Dahl. The story begins in a hole in the ground, (you may have heard the “I don’t want to live in a hole anymore” audio from somewhere, that’s from this movie!). Anyways, he really did not want to live in that hole, so he moved the family into a tree, despite being in a dangerous area. Nearby, there’s 3 farmers, Boggis, Bunce, and Bean, who are known for hunting foxes.
Later on throughout the movie, Mr. Fox attempts to steal their produce and poultry because they were in need. He had left behind his thieving past, but once they were in desperate need of food to survive, he returned to his roots. In the end, this leads him and his friend in trouble, as well as Mr. Fox’s entire family as they struggle to survive.
I absolutely love the stop motion animation throughout the film. The amount of effort put into each and every movement is insane, and the visuals are always amazing. This stays true in Fantastic Mr. Fox, with the amount of detail in each scene, through scenery and the characters themselves. The people who’ve created stop-motion animation movies/TV shows are so impressive and it’s hard to even comprehend how stop-motion animation is even possible.One of my favorite shows of all time in Morel Orel, which is stop motion claymation. There are also so many amazing movies made with stop-motion such as movies such as Coraline, and Wendell and Wild are some of my favorite movies to ever exist.
Since I don’t have a restaurant review this month like I normally do, I thought that I’d do a little food review with a recipe popular with Fantastic Mr Fox– that being Mrs. Beans nutmeg Ginger Apple Snaps. Creating them was very simple, we had almost all the ingredients already. All you need to do is mix ingredients together in a mixer, and you’re all set! The only pointer is you’d definitely need some sort of drink with it, as the cookie itself is a little dry. Otherwise, it’s not too sweet, and has a great fall flavor– it’s great paired with chai. So, to keep my review tradition, I would give an overall rating of these cookies a 4.5/5.
Now back to the movie itself, with the amazing characters, great visuals through stop-motion, and including a delicious recipe, I would rate this fall movie an overall 5 out of 5 spartan heads. I hope you come across this spectacular movie and decide to watch it yourself, maybe make cookies while watching it. If you enjoy the movie as much as I do, you should also read the book! There’s some strange comfort in reading a children’s book, and its fun to compare the book to the movie version and enjoy it in multiple formats. No matter, Fantastic Mr. Fox is an enjoyable story, perfectly enjoyed in fall!