A step back to the future with Mr Fox

Do you love watching animated films but tire of the CGI/3D gloss that the majority of recent examples revel in? If so then The Fantastic Mr Fox is for you.

The last few month have seen a wave of animation hit our cinemas, with Pixar's Up storming the box office charts and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs surprising everyone by being a sleeper hit. Personally I find it hard to get excited about 3D films - while they might add some depth to films they also dull the colours.

As entertaining as both those films are - and I defy anyone not to have “something in their eye” after the first 15 minutes of Up - they still look more like computer games than the old Disney films from the 1940s and 50s.

Long before Pixar came along with their box of magic trick there was stop-motion animation, the technique which involves moving an object in tiny increments so it appears to move on its own. Fans of Wallace and Gromit will be familiar with the technique, while recent fantasy film Coraline also used the medium to produce a unique world of wonder.

The Fantastic Mr Fox goes a step further (or is that step backwards?) in the use of models to depict its characters, Mr Fox's movements and facial expressions based on actor George Clooney who makes for a fantas...sorry, brilliant lead.

Though the high calibre cast of voice artists, including Meryl Streep, Bill Murray and Brian Cox, will have you trying to picture the actor playing the part, the decision to go retro is a welcome one and gives a touch of “reality” to the film that can be lacking with CGI films.

When Mr Fox's mouth moves so does the fur around his mouth, evidence that human fingers have painstakingly taken the time to manipulate him. Even simple effects such as leaves dancing across the road must have taken an age to arrange, again giving a human touch to the fantasy world.

If Mr Fox is the huge success it deserves to be, and if Coraline continues to sell well on DVD, then there's a chance movie studios will take a chance on more films like this. We're unlikely to see the end of CGI, but there should be enough room for more than one style of animation in our cinemas.