You have to bear in mind however, that this is a children’s film. There’s enough adult humour to keep people as interested as they would be in a Pixar film – but it’s a film for kids all the same. In fact, to give it very loose description I’d have to say it was somewhere close to Pixar meets Wallace & Gromit. Where Nick Park’s animation bears the thumb prints of its animators, Anderson’s team is far more precise. The animation on the human characters is sometimes better than the animals (take note, Pixar), with one very noteworthy effect being the cigarette flare on Farmer Bean’s darkened face during one the films more suspenseful sequences.
This marks the second of Anderson’s films not to be scored by Mark Mothersbaugh. You wouldn’t notice however - Alexandre Desplat’s score is very similar to what we have heard before on Rushmore, ...Tennebaums and The Life Aquatic, although not as rooted in classical as the heart of those scores. Still, we get some nice contemporary songs to give the film some pep where it needs it (The Rolling Stones’ Street Fighting Man has been long-overdue a revival) and it’s nice to get back to a fully Westernized soundtrack after the Eastern core of The Darjeeling Limited.
As for the players, with the exception of George Clooney and Merryl Streep, the film is nicely made up of ex-Anderson alumni, with Jason Schwartzman, Michael Gambon and Bill Murray all taking key roles; and Brian Cox, Owen Wilson and Willem Dafoe appearing in nice cameos.
If Anderson has done nothing more, he has created a piece of work reminiscent of the quality of such films as the Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory (1971) or golden-era Disney, with enough humour and references to keep the whole family happy. At the end of the day, it’s a cussing good film.
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