“Fantastic Mr. Fox” (2009)
I took 3yo Guppy with me to see Wes Anderson’s stop-motion animated adaptation of Road Dahl’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, and we had a fantastic time. It’s a clever fox versus mean farmers, and it turns into all out war. It’s a movie for kids that works for all ages, especially for fans of Wes Anderson, whose style is surprisingly well-suited to animation.
Clooney and Streep are charming in the voice leads, while Jason Schwartzman is hilarious as their sullen, weird son. There’s some violence and guns, so this is not for every kid, but those in the theater with us seemed to enjoy it immensely, and 3yo Guppy had no troubles.
My favorite part was how they substituted the word “cuss” for all other bad words: “What the cuss are you talking about?” “Cuss off!” From imdb’s trivia:
Throughout the film, the word “cuss” is used in place of actual cursing. When asked about its origin in a radio interview on “Fresh Air” with Terry Gross, Wes Anderson said, “I don’t even remember. It think it was just to use the concept of profanity as a replacement for profanity itself. It turned out to be very versatile.” In keeping with this theme, one of the buildings seen in the film bears “CUSS” written as spray-painted graffiti.