I am a Wes Fanderson.

So my judgment will be suspect, as he seems to pitch films directly at this sweet spot where my open crazed appreciation of the sublimely silly and the elaborately constructed coincides exactly with my usually-repressed sentimental streak. The Fantastic Mr. Fox has more going for it than the old Andersonian shtick, but there’s no real way to get around the fact that it is entirely besottedly invested in that shtick: the protagonist with the outsized ego determined to see & reshape the world around him (always him), carrying along an extended family for various forms of collateral damage; the glorious wonderbox compositions, the zesty deep-track pop soundtrack, the arch snappy dialogue running perpendicular to deep veins of sadness and loss; assorted and sundry Anderson familiars, from Bill Murray to a Wilson to Wally Wolodarsky.

But even the non-fan might be taken with the fussy florid detail of the stop-motion sets and figures — it is a pure aesthetic delight just to see the film unfold: the head-on shots of opossum Kylie’s spiral-eyed stare; the shadowed skeletal frame and outsized dome of villainous Bean backlit in a doorway, face momentarily glowing orange as he lights a cigarette; Ash’s towel cape; the frenzied wild-animal rubble-rubble-rubble as the animals tear into their meals throughout the film. And there’s something apt about ye olde WA plot dynamics spun through a children’s tale, where the thin yet sturdy little moral of every Anderson film (it is hard to grow up, yet we must) seems more exactly in touch with the generic concerns.

Funny, sweet, always gorgeous, fun. It even has a good bit of Latin. I loved it, but I am almost genetically-predetermined to love it. Still–I think you might, too.