The two actors make comedy magic together. Like the best comedic duos, Clooney and Wolodarsky bring out the best in one another in Fantastic Mr. Fox. Similar joys emerge in Clooney’s rapport with other Mr. Fox performers like Jason Schwartzman, Willem Dafoe, or Bill Murray. These aren’t actors that dominate the rest of Clooney’s filmography. If you want to hear Clooney’s voice bounce off Dafoe’s slimy vocals as The Rat, Fantastic Mr. Fox is your one and only chance. It’s a splendid facet of the man’s Mr. Fox work mirroring how this is somehow his only Anderson movie appearance. This already tremendous turn is even easier to treasure when there aren’t a plethora of other Clooney/Anderson collaborations to speak of.
Really, there are endless qualities of why George Clooney’s greatest work as an actor is voicing the titular lead of Fantastic Mr. Fox. Sometimes, though, it really is the simplest things that make a performance iconic. In the case of Clooney’s vocal turn as Mr. Fox, it’s a final conversation between this critter and Ash solidifying this performance’s greatness. Here, Mr. Fox recounts to the withdrawn Ash how he found out Mrs. Fox was pregnant with Ash while they were eluding hunters. As the pair were dug for their lives, Mr. Fox’s mind was stuck on one thing: who will this cub be? What kind of person will they become?
“Clooney’s Mr. Fox benefits mightily from Fantastic Mr. Fox’s unique process of capturing people’s vocal performances.”
For the whole movie, Ash has felt ignored by his dad, especially when cousin Kristofferson (Eric Chase Anderson) comes to town. In this moment, though, Mr. Fox finally reassures his son that he has nothing but love for him. “Ash,” Mr. Fox tells Ash, drawing him close, “I’m so glad that cub was you.”
That handful of words gets me choked up just writing them down. Their emotional power comes heavily from Clooney’s masterful delivery. There’s a frankness to his execution of this critical line laced with quiet affection. It’s a deft tonal mixture that reverberates with lived-in humanity, not forced sentimentality. Even in a career full of iconic leading man turns, this line delivery in Fantastic Mr. Fox alone crystallizes George Clooney’s power as an actor. Here is a motion picture that perfectly distills why Steven Spielberg discerned Clooney’s potential for movie stardom three decades ago.
Lisa Laman is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic and freelance writer living both on the autism spectrum and in Texas.
