Fantastic Mr. Fox

One of over 400 movies that George Clooney starred in during 2009, Fantastic Mr. Fox is a stop-motion movie about Mr. Fox who raids farms and steals birds. To eat, of course. His wife, Mrs. Fox (Meryl Streep), talks him out of stealing and he eventually becomes a writer for the local newspaper.

Feeling like his life is going nowhere, Fox plans to start raiding farms again. However, the farmers are on to him and they begin to make life hard on the animals. Now it's up to Mr. Fox to save the day.

The movie is an animated adaptation of the Roald Dohl children's book. The movie also stars the voices of Bill Murry, the opossum, Jason Schwartzman, Cate Blanchett, Willem Defoe, and Owen Wilson.

The movie was directed by Wes Anderson, who is known for The Darjeerling Limited, The Royal Tenenbaums, and Rushmore. The Fantastic Mr. Fox is rated PG for smoking (gasp!), smoking, and some mild violence (including shooting of guns - gasp!).

The Fantastic Mr. Fox is very melodramatic. There is very little inflection in the dialog and the humor is very dry. VERY dry. It's drier than a $4 bottle of white wine. Both of my kids watched the movie and neither got into it very much. And neither did their Papa.

This was not my favorite kids movie, nor my favorite dry humor movie. I just didn't find it all that funny. For this I can only give it 2 stars.

The Water Horse

There have been a lot of movies lately that are aimed at children my daughter's age, which is 8. The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep is no exception.

This is a mystical movie about a boy named Angus MacMorrow (Alex Etel) who finds an egg on the rocky beaches of Scotland during World War II. He hides the egg in his father's workshop and it eventually hatches. As the creature starts to grow, Angus has a difficult time keeping him hidden. We know this creature to be the Loch Ness monster, though this creature is anything but a monster.


First his sister (Priyanka Xi) finds the creature, then the hired hand (Ben Chaplin) that his mother (Emily Watson) has taken in. They realize that this creature is special. They call him the water horse and decide they must do whatever they can to save him. The three of them agree to hide the creature and eventually decide to release him in the Loch. Meanwhile, Angus becomes even more attached to the creature and it helps him overcome his fear of the water.


Unfortunately, the British military (remember that Scotland is part of the United Kingdom) is patrolling the Loch for German U-Boats and become suspicious that something is amiss. The military detachment that's been assigned to the area eventually begins to take target practice at the Loch, which is having adverse affects on the water horse. Angus must now hurry to save him.


Like any epic movie aimed at children, this one has a happy ending. No, the military does not blow up the water horse with its cannons. The movie is mostly dark and very suspenseful. The accents are a bit thick, sometimes to the point where my 8 year old daughter had to ask me what they were saying.

The movie is 112 minutes long, that's nearly 2 hours. I let my daughter rate this movie and she gives it 4 stars. To her, this 2007 release was not as good as Bridge to Terabithia or Nancy Drew, but better than Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium. Unfortunately for my kids, it looks like the next release of a children's movie will be the Chronicles of Narnia, Prince Caspia, which will probably be in June.