Weekend Movie Forecast: 2012 Vs. Fantastic Mr. Fox

Wes Anderson's latest opus, Fantastic Mr. Fox, is the painstakingly retro stop-motion animation adaptation of the Roald Dahl children's book. Critics have mostly embraced the film, and now it's up to the masses to decide if Fox Searchlight can make a buck off Anderson's signature preciousness. (One of those puppets cost $83,000 alone!) Jeffrey Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere says, "I loved and worshipped the auteurist aspect—the luscious autumnal colors, the every-other-frame movement that Anderson and his team used to create Fox's particular stop-motion look... [New York's David] Edelstein calls it 'a dandy's movie,' and that it is.

"Which, as noted, is what gives my inner movie dweeb such pleasure. I intend to buy, watch and occasionally re-watch the Fantastic Mr. Fox Bluray when it comes out next year. But most American moviegoers are not dandies. They're slugs and lugs, and I know, trust me, what's going to happen when they watch it on screens this weekend...

"The immutable laws of probability and outcome don't apply. No foxes get killed despite ridiculous automatic-weapons odds against them. (It's a little bit like Sylvester Stallone never being winged in Rambo II.) Life can sometimes be brutal in actuality and sometimes very tough decisions have to be made, and sometimes people stumble and fall and die and go to jail, but in Fantastic Mr. Fox life is an ironic bullshit thing...a hip romp...a lightweight goof."