“Hollywood is out of ideas” – a phrase I mutter every few months when I think that the art of film-making is on its last legs, sputtering and choking and hacking out pieces of phlegm like Dude, Where’s My Car?, Battlefield Earth, Disaster Movie, and any feature-length remake of a 1970′s TV show. But then a movie comes out and I get hooked into believing that there’s hope for the art form…I know, I’m a sucker for not giving up on the old geezer after seeing Christmas with the Kranks…which, by the way, I was forced to watch….kicking and screaming.

This time, the aforementioned bestower of hope in film is The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Wes Anderson’s latest. Firstly, I can’t say enough about how beautifully made this movie is. Mr Fox is nothing less than a visual feast, filled with crisp colors and lush textures. Anderson and his crew use puppets and stop motion animation and use them brilliantly. The characters are fun to watch and the scenes are so filled with detail that I’m sure that I’ll be noticing new things every time I watch.

Based on the children’s book by Roald Dahl and voiced by George Clooney, the titular Mr. Fox’s yearning for upward mobility and the thrill of the hunt clashes with his familial responsibilities and creates a conflict with three farmers: “Boggis and Bunce and Bean, one fat, one short, one lean. These horrible crooks, so different in looks, are nonetheless equally mean.” This clash of man and fox threaten the lives of not just the Fox family but all of the droll, furry inhabitants of this particular patch of British countryside.

But, in the end, the beautiful visuals and straightforward narrative serves simply as a vehicle to showcase the clever and understated character interaction and development that is an Anderson staple. In The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, we are given a tale of jaguar sharks, pregnant journos, too-tight wetsuits, and neon crayon pony-fish, but we are drawn in by the father-son-girlfriend love triangle and the internal struggle of a middle-aged man in a little red hat grappling with his own mortality. The Royal Tenenbaums twists and turns and doubles back again, but connecting all the dots is less important than enjoying and appreciating the quirky moments of doubt and self discovery of this family of disillusioned misanthropes.

In Mr Fox, we meet several memorable charaters: badgers, foxes, beavers and mice who chew on existential questions of life and love one minute and break the necks of chickens with one savage bite the next, all while walking upright, wearing suits and ties, and behaving more like the cast of “Friends” than the inhabitants of the local zoo.

Fox struggles with the course of his life: “Why a fox?” Mr. Fox asks building attendant Kylie, an opossum with an odd case of occasional ADD, “Why not a horse, or a beetle, or a bald eagle? I’m saying this more as, like, existentialism, you know? Who am I?”

Mrs. Fox tries to hold the family together while wondering if she married the wrong man..urrr…mammal and Ash struggles with pre-teen inadequacy issues while wearing a bath towel as a cape and demanding to be called “athletic.”

A cast of seasoned actors voices these fuzzy reflections of ourselves, Clooney, Meryl Streep as Mrs. Fox, Bill Murray as Mr. Fox’s lawyer Badger and Willem Dafoe as security guard Rat.

Check it out. I think it might be Anderson’s best and wouldn’t be surprised if he sticks with animation a bit longer…it’s, well, fantastic. (ok, I hate myself a little bit for ending with such a goofy cliche.)