Regular readers may recall a stark fact from Gazz’ article some months previous – only the 1 film out of the top 20 highest grossing, from the last decade has been based on an original script.

I don’t expect Fantastic Mr. Fox to make it onto the 20 Highest Grossing films list for the next decade (not just because it was released before the 20X decade began), however it makes a good job of sticking covertly to a honey-covered trend identified by Gazz. Of the top 30 highest grossing, 17 (that’s more than 50% if you had a few too many shandys last night) are based on printed material (including the comics).

Fantastic Mr. Fox is the 5th of Roald Dahl’s books to be adapted into a feature length cinema production. I’m not handing out any golden stars here, so the other 4 are The BFG, The Witches, Matilda, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, twice, with The Twits and another version of The Witches seemingly (if IMDB are to be believed – which they always are) in development. With the exception of the first of his beloved children’s books The BFG, these have all been live-action productions. It’s easy to avoid comparison between the stylistic drawings of Quentin Blake and the 24fps real time capturing of a film camera because of this fact (and because the team of previously the only animated version of a Dahl book (BFG) was a team of 200, copying Blake’s scribbling). But in this latest adaptation, the team directed by Wes Anderson (The Royal Tenenbaums) have bravely decided to recreate the world of Mr. Fox and his skulk with animation, but not as we know it Quentin.

They’ve used the now old-fashioned method of stop-motion to create the lives of the book’s characters through the movement of their puppets. It’s an old-fashioned technique given multiple advances in the world of CGI. Noting the fact that Toy Story was now 15 years ago, and the amazing things that have been done with a relatively low budget ($8.5m) film like A Scanner Darkly 4 years ago. But they’ve made it work for them. In format style it can be compared to Team America: World Police for use of puppetry, or more significantly Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Warerabbit for stop-motion, but both of these had much more a sense of propriety to them.

Fantastic Mr. Fox is a children’s film. It’s a children’s book, and a children’s film. Children’s books are made to be read either by children to children (themselves), or by adults to children. We’re not talking about Harry Potter here. You’re not going to get away with reading a children’s book, just because everyone else does. But film is different. Children’s films are made either to be watched and enjoyed by children, or to be watched and enjoyed by adults because they make you feel like a child (which in this case is a good thing).

In order to make you feel childish, sweet, forgiving, and innocent, the film has to be and look so. All the ‘children’s’ animations I can think of from and including Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Ice Age, and Shrek, so much time and effort has gone into every frame of those films. Into obsessing over making sure each hair on Donkey’s tail wafts in the perfectly symmetrical direction to the wind and speed for that time of day. Every ripple of Nemo’s back fin relates perfectly to his estimated swimming speed judged by his passing objects. Who really cares!? Children don’t give a fuck. A child isn’t going to point out the fact that Sid fell over in scene 6, resulting in a streak of dirt on his right foot, which disappears in scene 14. Perhaps some kind of Son of Satan, spawn of Andrew Adamson might, not an innocent child.

It’s this and exactly this which makes Fantastic Mr. Fox into such a super film for me. Because it plays the part of the children’s film so sweetly, you want to take it home and wrap it in a bow, then clone it to sell in Japan.

I’ve already gone on for far too long about nothing. However truly, there’s no need for me to go into any more detail about why I think it’s so good. It may be still on at some cinemas, if you can find one, just go. If not, save your pennies and eagerly await the DVD.