Fantastic Mr. Fox (film)

While raiding Berk's Squab Farm, Mr. Fox triggers a fox trap caging himself along with his wife Felicity. She reveals her pregnancy to her husband and pleads with him to find a safer job if they escape, and he agrees.

Two human years (12 fox years) later, the Foxes and their son Ash are living in a hole. Mr. Fox, now a newspaper columnist, moves the family into a better home inside a tree, ignoring the warnings of his lawyer Clive Badger about how dangerous the area is for foxes due to its proximity to facilities run by three farmers: Walt Boggis, Nate Bunce, and Frank Bean.

Soon after the Foxes move in, Felicity's nephew Kristofferson Silverfox comes to live with them due to his father receiving long-term medical treatment for double pneumonia. While Mr. and Mrs. Fox welcome him, Ash finds this situation intolerable, as his soft-spoken cousin is superior to him at almost everything and is charming everyone at his expense. Longing for his days as a thief, Mr. Fox and his opossum friend Kylie, the superintendent, steal produce and poultry from Boggis and Bunce's farms. They take Kristofferson along on the raid on Bean's cider cellar, which deepens Ash's resentment. Mr. Fox conceals these outings from Felicity, who becomes suspicious when unexplained food appears in their larder.

Angered by the raids, the farmers decide to kill Mr. Fox. They camp out near his home, and when Mr. Fox emerges, they open fire but only shoot off his tail. After demolishing the site of the tree while attempting to dig Mr. Fox out, they discover the Foxes have dug an escape tunnel. As the Foxes will have to surface for food and water, the farmers wait at the tunnel mouth. Underground, Felicity is upset that Mr. Fox returned to his thieving ways.

The group encounters Badger and many other local animal residents whose homes the farmers have also destroyed. As the animals begin fearing starvation, Mr. Fox calls them together and leads them on a digging expedition to tunnel to the three farms, stealing all of their prized goods. While the animals feast, Ash and Kristofferson begin to reconcile after Kristofferson defends Ash from Beaver's son.

Discovering that Mr. Fox has stolen their goods, the farmers and the fire chief flood the animals' tunnel network with some of Bean's cider, forcing the animals to retreat to the sewers. Ash and Kristofferson slip away from the celebration and return to Bean's farm, intending to reclaim the missing tail, but Bean's wife captures Kristofferson. Realizing that the farmers plan to use Kristofferson to lure him into an ambush, Mr. Fox heads to the surface to surrender but returns when Rat, Bean's violent security guard, confronts the animals and attacks Ash and Felicity. A fight between Mr. Fox and Rat results in the latter being pushed into a generator, electrocuting him. Before dying, Rat reveals that Kristofferson is being held in an attic in Bean Annex, prompting Mr. Fox to organize a rescue mission.

Mr. Fox asks the farmers for a meeting in Paddington near the sewer hub, offering to surrender himself on the condition that the farmers free Kristofferson and spare the other animals. The farmers prepare an ambush, but the animals, anticipating it, launch a counterattack that allows Mr. Fox, Ash, and Kylie to enter Bean Annex undetected. Ash frees Kristofferson and impresses his father and the group by braving enemy fire to release a rabid beagle to keep the farmers at bay. The animal snatches the fox tail from Mr. Bean and rips it apart. Kristofferson picks up the torn tail as the group escapes back to the sewers.

As the farmers wait for the animals to come out of the manhole, the animals settle into their new homes in the sewers, inviting any other animals to join them. Soon after, Fox (sporting the tail as a clip on) raids a supermarket owned by the farmers, where Felicity reveals her upcoming pregnancy as the animals dance in the aisle, celebrating their abundant new food source.

The score for the film was composed by Alexandre Desplat. Jarvis Cocker commented that he wrote "three, four" songs for the film, one of which was included on the soundtrack ("Fantastic Mr. Fox A.K.A. Petey's Song").[20] The soundtrack also contains a selection of songs by The Beach Boys, The Bobby Fuller Four, Burl Ives, Georges Delerue, The Rolling Stones, and other artists. A soundtrack album for the film was released on November 3, 2009.[21] A second album featuring additional music from the film was released in 2010.

The film had its world premiere as the opening film of the 53rd edition of the London Film Festival on October 14, 2009.[22] 20th Century Fox released it theatrically the following month on November 13.

Fantastic Mr. Fox grossed $21,002,919 in the U.S., and $25,468,104 outside the U.S., making a total of $46,471,023 worldwide.[4]

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 93% based on 245 reviews and an average rating of 7.90/10. The site's consensus states: "Fantastic Mr. Fox is a delightfully funny feast for the eyes with multi-generational appeal – and it shows Wes Anderson has a knack for animation".[26] The film also became the second highest-rated animated film in 2009 on the site, behind Up. On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 83 out of 100 based on 34 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".[27] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.[28]

Roger Ebert gave the film three and a half stars out of four, writing that, like Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, children may find some aspects of the film perplexing or scary, which he considered a positive element to a children's film.[29] Devin D. O'Leary of Weekly Alibi called it "a one-of-a-kind family classic."[30]

A. O. Scott called Fantastic Mr. Fox:

In some ways (Wes Anderson's) most fully realized and satisfying film. Once you adjust to its stop-and-start rhythms and its scruffy looks, you can appreciate its wit, its beauty and the sly gravity of its emotional undercurrents. The work done by the animation director, Mark Gustafson, by the director of photography, Tristan Oliver, and by the production designer, Nelson Lowry, shows amazing ingenuity and skill, and the music (by Alexandre Desplat, with the usual shuffle of well-chosen pop tunes, famous and obscure) is both eccentric and just right.[31]

According to Time, the film is "both a delightful amusement and a distillation of the filmmaker's essential playfulness"[32] and was one of the ten best films of the year.[33] Cosmo Landesman of The Sunday Times said "having a quirky auteur like Anderson make a children's film is a bit like David Byrne, of Talking Heads, recording an album of nursery rhymes produced by Brian Eno". According to Landesman:

In style and sensibility, this is really a Wes Anderson film, with little Dahl. It's missing the darker elements that characterize Dahl's books. There you find the whiff of something nasty: child abuse, violence, misogyny. Gone, too, is any sense of danger. Even the farmers, who are made to look a touch evil, don't seem capable of it. We never feel the tension of watching the Fox family facing real peril. The film certainly has Americanized Dahl's story, and I don't mean the fact that the good animals have American accents and the baddies have British ones. It offers yet another celebration of difference and a lesson on the importance of being yourself. But it does leave you thinking: isn't it time that children's films put children first?[34]

Amy Biancolli from the Houston Chronicle wrote:

Anderson injects such charm and wit, such personality and nostalgia—evident in the old-school animation, storybook settings and pitch-perfect use of Burl Ives—that it's easy to forgive his self-conscious touches.[35]

Ann Hornaday from The Washington Post calls it a:

Self-consciously quirky movie that manages to be twee and ultra-hip at the same time, it qualifies as yet another wry, carefully composed bibelot in the cabinet of curios that defines the Anderson oeuvre.[36]

Peter Howell from the Toronto Star stated:

In an age when everything seems digital, computer-driven and as fake as instant coffee, more and more artists (Spike Jonze and John Lasseter among them) are embracing the old ways of vinyl records, hand-drawn cartoons and painstaking stop-motion character movements.[37]

In 2011, Richard Corliss of Time magazine named it one of "The 25 All-Time Best Animated Films".[38]

• Foxes in popular culture, films and literature

Wikiquote has quotations related to Fantastic Mr. Fox (film).

• Fantastic Mr. Fox at IMDb
• Fantastic Mr. Fox at AllMovie
• Fantastic Mr. Fox: Vulpine Nature an essay by Erica Wagner at The Criterion Collection