Coraline & Fantastic Mr. Fox

I'm sure we all know by now how wonderful Up is but 2009 saw some other equally majestic, non-CG animated films. Here's a quick look at a couple I've just went and caught up with on DVD:

Fantastic Mr. Fox



Roald Dahl's book was one of my favourites as a kid. As such watching a movie based on it, however loosely, contains a certain element of nostalgia. Wes Anderson, long a director obsessed with the artifices associated with storytelling, understands this so the decision to make Mr. Fox's escapades as a stop motion film is a master stroke. The animation is deliberately crude in an attempt to capture the feel of the era that gave us shows such as Bagpuss and The Clangers. Anderson has shown himself to be a bit of an Anglophile in previous films so even with an American cast this has the quirkiness you'd expect from those shows. For me the book is linked to a time when programmes like this were amongst my favourites, right before the American series like Ghostbusters and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles came along. As such the film evokes fuzzy feelings for me of a time when sweeties cost peanuts and were bigger then your hand and summer seemed to last for three years. Fantastic Mr. Fox isn't just a great film for kids, it's a fantastic one for those who remember what it's like to be one.

Coraline



Also using model-based stop motion animation is Coraline. Things are far slicker here though, in fact at times you'd swear this was CGI. This is down to the astonishing work of Henry Selick and his team, a group that can genuinely be called genius. This is truly an incredible piece of work. Much like Fantastic Mr.Fox it's as much a film about being a kid as it is one for them, only this time it's based around the fears you have. This is a horror/fantasy and it's safe to say it'll probably disturb young children. That's not necessarily a bad thing in these days of mollycoddling our kids. When I was younger I used to secretly love being scared, in fact monsters and ghosts were what I loved most even if the concept of them terrified me. Coraline plays on this. The fantasy world is thrilling, the creatures scary but it's almost shot through with emotion and humour. Quite frankly it is a wonderful film.

Both these films were nominated for Best Animation at the Oscars. As worthy a winner as Up was it would have been great to see one of these filmmakers picking up the award, surely Pixar have enough little gold men cutting about their studio. In an age where virtually all animated films are made on the Google box it has been refreshing to watch two old-fashioned, yet completely original pictures. And just like Pixar's output they succeed mainly because no matter how great their style is underneath there lies not only an engaging story but tonnes of heart. Like the best animation they don't treat the young audience they're primarily aimed at as naive and foolish, and in turn become great films for us older ones too.