Harkening back to the joys of their first collaboration, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach's script for their stop-motion animated adaptation of Roald Dahl's children's novel The Fantastic Mr. Fox brings a wry and mature sensibility to the story, enhancing the original's larkish fun. Although it may initially seem to be yet another kids-film-for-adults of the kind the industry has been pumping out of late, Mr. Fox manages to be something else entirely. Pandering to neither audience, it remains true to its story's vulpine nature.

Starting off with the verse that Dahl used to describe the story's three human farmer villains -- "Boggis and Bunce and Bean / One fat, one short, one lean / These horrible crooks / So different in looks / Were nonetheless equally mean" -- Anderson's film gets right down to business. After getting outwitted by a trap set by a farmer he was trying to steal chickens from, Mr. Fox (voiced by George Clooney in full-on Cary Grant rogue-mode) is forced to deal with the fact that being the best chicken-thief in the area doesn't win him any points with the missus (Meryl Streep, given relatively little to do but voice dismay). It also doesn't keep him from almost getting caught.

Cut to several years later. Mr. Fox has turned to a sensible career, penning a newspaper column for the local animal community. It's a civilized world he inhabits, everyone from rabbits to badgers walking upright, kitted out in tweedy vests. Like any suburban dad, he has real estate woes and problems with his son, Ash (Jason Schwartzman), a petulant and resentful kid given to wearing capes. Only, the call of the wild keeps intruding, whether it's in Mr. Fox's pent-up drive for fowl thievery or a brief comedic display of bared-fangs between Mr. Fox and his legal advisor, Badger (Bill Murray) -- one that's over as soon as it starts and barely interrupts the flow of their humdrum conversation.

The rub comes when Mr. Fox decides, in the manner of all great fictional cads, to make one last stab at greatness. This provokes the enmity of Boggis, Bunce, and Bean, who join forces to wage war on Mr. Fox and, by definition, all the other animals in the vicinity as well. The conflict that results is mostly played for laughs, with flaming pine-cone bombs, a deadly beatnik rat (Willem Dafoe), and some jokes involving hard cider -- which is all that the lean and mean Bean (Michael Gambon, threateningly rumbling) lives on. But melancholy elements intrude here and there, with the threat of serious, family-ending discord in the Fox clan, and a frightening Watership Down edge to the apocalyptic nature of Bean, et al's campaign against Mr. Fox.

This is a comedy, though, and one told with fleet-footed confidence. Anderson makes the slightly stiff, herky-jerky artificiality of stop-motion animation work in his favor, highlighting the off-key notes endemic to his humor. Though working from Dahl's text, the director makes the world clearly his own, indulging in the kind of family-oriented world-building that characterized films like The Royal Tenenbaums -- as evidenced by the architectural cut-out shots of the underground hideout, or the deliriously over-the-top complications of the animals' favorite game, whack bat (like cricket combined with urban guerrilla warfare).

It's like a treehouse for grownups, where all sorts of fantastical make-believe can be dreamed up and games played. Only, of course, there's a bar on-site, with newspapers to read and pipes to smoke.



Hey, that's my good side.