Brendonyu668’s review published on Letterboxd:
Initially I gave this 4 stars, but after this rewatch, it deserves 4.5 stars. This is my second time watching this film.
The screenplay is really good. The character introductions are brilliant. This film is very hilarious at times with a lot of strong themes present. There is an excellent amount of character reflections and the Wes Anderson humour works really well. I found the movie to be very engaging in terms of the story, but it is very different to what I recalled from the novel. The ending is a perfect way to finish. The animal characters all bring positive aspects, despite a lot of troubles. A lot of the depiction of the decision making and events are very relatable to our lives.
The voice cast is fantastic (pun intended). George Clooney's voice is just magnificent and very fun to hear. His voice performance is one of the best voice performances of all time.
The stop-motion animation is actually very colourful and pretty creative. The visual style does follow with other Wes Anderson's films. I appreciated the music more - a quirky style, but also very memorable. I have no idea why, but the song 'Boggis, Bunce and Bean' is catchy for me. The selection of songs are also top-notch. The film's pacing is fast, without a boring moment.
I watched this film as a kid and I find it to be very unmemorable, hard to follow and an forgetful animation compared to Pixar and Disney quality. I personally didn't think this film is optimised for kids, which it should be because it is based on a children's book that I had read during that time. Therefore, I can't give this 5 stars because the film has the wrong target audience.
If you didn't like this film as a kid, I strongly recommend you to rewatch this film as you may enjoy more as an adult or teenager. A film I don't recommend for kids, but if you are a teenager or adult, I highly recommend you to watch this film!
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