NotLethiwe

horrified. Depressive episode immediately after this film.

I love a lot of the characters, the world, and the comedy, but the interactions and developments in the main few could have been taken in a different direction. For example, Ash. Ash is introduced as this.... "different" kid. Frustrated by everyone around not showing him any love or attention, including his own father who is a hilariously bad dad. In turn, Ash hurting and being rude and turbulent because he's being outshined by his cousin who is in town for a short time. His cousin Christopherson is great at everything and praised by everyone including Mr fox. Mr fox, doing his crazy antics through the story does such crazy things as inviting Christopherson to burgle with them, after shooing his son away. Comical. Loved that. Silly. Near the end, in a climactic moment, Ash is finally useful through his own unique way, highlighting his small size as something needed in a moment. That was great, but following that, there was another moment where Ash did something totally out of character. Something "big" that made his father switch up on him. He was able to do something, that he was originally shown to be super bad at etc; and maybe that's a play on what we see as an audience, where we are seeing Ash through the eyes of everyone around him, but here he does something very out there, but moving forward from that, after he does that and helps everyone he finally gets major praise from his father. Ash is recognised for it, qnd I think that moment is something I have a gripe with. I think Ash should have still not been as useful. His character arc didn't really warrant a sudden big corny moment like that. I expected him to grow through accepting that he might not be as liked or as good at things. I wanted Ash to learn to feeling good about himself without the thoughts of everyone else; and also being a nicer person to Christopherson, as he's just living his life, which isn't perfect either. Perhaps I'm being too verbose on it but that's something that could have gone in a totally different way in my mind. Don't get me started on Mr fox. I love him but his whimsy takes away from moments that could really have been very heartfelt or dramatic. There are so many parallels between him and Ash that aren't explored, as he does things to be seen as "fantastic", something that Ash chases and fails. Mr fox is just like Ash in what he wants from people. So much that could have been tapped into and explored. How unhealthy that is, and how Mr fox feels just as trapped as his son. But anyway, I digress. It's a children's film. I guess I'm just passionate about these details because of how much I did enjoy the movie and thinking about all that was presented in terms of them. (this might not be coherent, I'm writing this review at 2am 😭)