Wes Anderson's 'The Fantastic Mr. Fox' looks like a throwback to classic stop-motion animation from the '60s

Credit: Fox Searchlight

During the entire production of "The Fantastic Mr. Fox," images have been on lockdown to such a degree that we didn't even have a basic idea of what the style of the film might be.  When you say "stop-motion animation," that doesn't really have anything to do with the look of the film... it's just a technique.

The last two weeks have been sort of an avalanche of material about the film, though, including the debut of the first trailer, and the reaction has been diverse, to say the least.

If you haven't seen it, you should start with USA Today's photo gallery, which contains a fair bit of excellent reportage about who's playing what and how the film's been built.

I've heard from many friends who find the trailer almost unspeakably ugly, who hate the animation, and who think the movie stars overwhelm the piece.  When my wife was pregnant, both times, I did a lot of reading to the tummy, and I particularly enjoyed reading Roald Dahl.  There's something particularly juicy about the way he plays with words that makes those books fun to read aloud, and The Fantastic Mr. Fox was one of the books that we read more than once.

Yahoo! Movies got the trailer premiere, and now Fox Searchlight's released it through their YouTube channel as well:

[more, including trailer, after the jump]

You can mark me down in the "really liked what I saw" camp on this one.  I love Clooney's voice for Mr. Fox, I love the wry sense of humor, I love the very low-tech look of the animation... it pushes the right buttons for me.  It's the opposite of the slick studio animation we're used to seeing, and that's what I like about it.

It's just a quick glimpse, true.  The finished film is still a big fat question mark.  But for now, color me curious based on this first glimpse, and confused by the intense negative reactions of so many of my peers.

Can't get enough of Motion/Captured? Don't miss a post with daily HitFix Blog Alerts. Sign up now.

Don't miss out. Add Motion/Captured to your iGoogle, My Yahoo or My MSN experience by clicking here.

Not part of the HitFix Nation yet? Take 90 seconds and sign up today.