The 2017 Animated Contenders: "The Big Bad Fox"
Friday, December 1, 2017 at 5:28PM by Tim Brayton
If you've been following the Best Animated Feature Oscar for the past few years, perhaps you remember the 2013 nominee Ernest & Celestine, a gentle and generous children's movie from France, about the adventures of a bear and a mouse becoming best friends while on the run from the law. This year, two of that film's producers and one of its directors are back in the hunt with The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales, an anthology of stories about the inhabitants of a rural farmyard in France.
The film took a roundabout path to theaters. Based on comic books by Benjamin Renner – the Ernest & Celestine director, back to help usher his material to the screen, with co-director Patrick Imbert and co-writer Jean Regnaud – the three stories were initially intended to be episodes in a TV series. Somewhere along the way, they got promoted to feature film status, with the help of a framework narrative presenting the stories as plays put on by an enthusiastic, barely-competent theater troupe of farm animals.
