The Fantastic Mr. Fox

One of the things about having college age children home is that you want to do things with them. Other then being polite, hungry, broke and bored, they likely do not have a reciprocating interest. A desperate and conniving parent can work these qualities to their benefit occasionally and spend some time with their child or children who are home for the holidays. Notice I do not call it quality time. Quality time is of course a myth developed by over scheduled parents to justify the limited time they (we) spend as parents but even in it’s most defensible form quality time is focused on the parent being “in the moment” and the child is really just reactive or entertained. When your kids are in college quality time would require that they be “engaged” in the idea of interacting with you and generally my children do not. But they will do things with us because they are polite (guilt), hungry, broke or bored. Perhaps some time I will write a little primer for parents as to how to take advantage of these various states.

Yesterday was a full family day. I worked all morning because it is asinine to expect that your college age student would interact with you in any way prior to noon. I came home at 1 after meeting the entire male Kowert/Winstorer clan for a cocktail at Biggies before they ate lunch. These men are big, heavy drinking, huge headed mammals and when congregated it is always prudent to wade in early and wade out quickly. You want to get out before the political discussion… or the fantasy football discussion… or the will Notre Dame win the National Championship discussion starts…. or before the check arrives. So I got home at 1:00 at took the family to O’Connells. Always a winner and we gorged on meat. Jon, who is 21 then went with me to meet some Lutherans at the Village Bar where we cheered briefly for Auburnwho choked away a lead and lost to Alabamaand then we went home to pick up the rest of the family and see “The Fabulous Mr. Fox”.

I was hesitant, reluctant and well… passive aggressive and bitchy as 13 year old girl about having to go to this animated movie I knew nothing about. The fact that it was a Wes Anderson directed effort (Royal Tannenbaums, Rushmore etc…) ameliorated this slightly but not much. Still this was what a “good father” would do in attending a silly movie with his wife and children and not insisting on action or drama or at least a pretty girl. But I went because it was the dreaded “right thing to do” and as we all know I always try to be very competitive in the FATHER OF THE YEAR awards. OK, so it was a tepid effort, it was not taking my kids kayaking in sea caves but it was effort so GET OFF MY ASS!

We attended the movie at the theatre at “Crestwood Court(f/k/a CrestwoodPlaza). Crestwood Courtis a near vacant, sprawling development in mid south countySt. Louisand just south of our home in Lower Webster (Upper Crestwood). The entire family admonished me not to enter the cavernous parking lot which is evidently crumbing in on itself and has several areas no longer safe to drive under or park in but I braved it along with 7 or 8 other cars. Evidently the more intelligent (safer) people park on top of the decaying structure? Crestwood was a vast strip mall which they then enclosed in the 70s and spread it out back when you could still have a mall that was not adjacent to a major highway (the dark ages). It used to have about 75-100 stores. It now has about a dozen, and the movie theatre and has a vague post apocalyptic feel which is unsettling, creepy and kind of cool.

For whatever reason we got all the animated and children’s movies trailers. Should I care? I guess “Alice In Wonderland” with Johnny Depp could be cool but other then that I snoozed and prepared myself for boredom. Happily I was dead wrong, wrongy mc wrongerson. This proved to be an excellent little bit of entertainment. This Ronald Dahl guy was also the author of “James and the Giant Peach” and the seminal children’s story “Charlie And the Chocolate Factory”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_DahlHe died in 1990 but I think he would have been pleased with what Mr. Anderson did with his story which centers around Mr. Fox. The movie opens with the redoubtable Mr. Fox (George Clooney) and his young wife (Meryl Streep) unsuccessfully engaged in stealing some “squabs”. Out of love for his wife he foregoes a life of thievery and pursues a career as a journalist but alas…

After the birth of a new child he moves to a dangerous neighborhood against the advice of his badger lawyer (Bill Murray) and enters into a plan to rob three awful farmers (successfully) with his possum sidekick only to enter into a death struggle with the three farmers around which the central story develops. The story is a great one in my opinion . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantastic_Mr_Fox It is a classic morality play and asks all the big questions about parenting, marriage, our essential nature and… well it is just funny. Selfishly my favorite line is when he is lying in bed and life in his new house is falling down around him and he mutters to the ceiling with his wife turned away from him in bed, “I should have listened to my lawyer”.

Also well done is Jason Schwartzmen’s portrayal of their son “Ash’. Ash is an undersized, uncoordinated, bitchy, petulant unlikable fox who has to deal with his visiting, athletic, yoga practicing cousin. Much character growth and development here. The entire movie is well done. I laughed out loud and in this one case, this holiday weekend the chips fell into place and I enjoyed a few hours where my whole family was enjoying themselves together and unexpectedly. Life generally is not much sweeter then this.

Again…Happy Thanksgiving weekend and GO TCU Horn Frogs!