Movies
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
Best / Worst of the Decade
Wide Releases
Now In Theaters
49
2012
53
Alice in Wonderland
41
Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel
84
Avatar![]()
69
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
53
Blind Side
53
Book of Eli, The
xx
Bounty Hunter, The
43
Brooklyn's Finest
55
Christmas Carol, A
31
Cop Out
55
Crazies, The
57
Daybreakers
43
Dear John
27
Did You Hear About the Morgans?
55
Edge of Darkness
45
Extraordinary Measures
83
Fantastic Mr. Fox![]()
42
From Paris with Love
61
Green Zone
65
Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, The
74
Invictus
57
It's Complicated
34
Law Abiding Citizen
33
Leap Year
32
Legion
42
Lovely Bones, The
54
Men Who Stare At Goats, The
34
Ninja Assassin
19
Old Dogs
39
Our Family Wedding
47
Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief
39
Planet 51
79
Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire
73
Princess & the Frog, The
69
Redbelt
40
Remember Me
xx
Repo Men
64
Road, The
57
Sherlock Holmes
48
She's Out of My League
63
Shutter Island
27
Spy Next Door, The
36
Tooth Fairy
44
Twilight Saga: New Moon, The
83
Up in the Air![]()
34
Valentine's Day
25
When in Rome
71
Where the Wild Things Are
43
Wolfman, The
63
Youth in Revolt
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Limited Releases
Now In Theaters
67
3 Idiots
47
44 Inch Chest
82
Ajami![]()
71
American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein
73
Amreeka
76
Art of the Steal, The
43
Barefoot to Timbuktu
19
Bitch Slap
49
Blood Done Sign My Name
24
Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, The
76
Broken Embraces
52
Celine: Through the Eyes of the World
67
Children of Invention
xx
City Island
64
Cloud 9
65
Coco Before Chanel
84
Cove, The![]()
83
Crazy Heart![]()
21
Crazy on the Outside
51
Creation
xx
Daddy Long Legs
81
Damned United, The![]()
57
Defendor
61
Delta
68
Departures
xx
Diary of a Wimpy Kid
64
District 13: Ultimatum
72
Easier with Practice
85
Education, An![]()
61
Exploding Girl, The
70
Eyes Wide Open
24
Falling Awake
81
Fish Tank![]()
56
For My Father
51
Formosa Betrayed
xx
From Mexico with Love
43
Frozen
xx
Ghost Town
77
Ghost Writer, The
69
Girl on the Train, The
47
Good Guy, The
71
Greenberg
35
Happy Tears
68
Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Suess
20
Harlem Aria
xx
Killing Jar, The
52
Killing Kasztner
xx
Kimjongilia
41
Last New Yorker, The
76
Last Station, The
47
Little Traitor, The
51
Loss of a Teardrop Diamond, The
71
Lourdes
73
Me and Orson Welles
77
Messenger, The
82
Mid-August Lunch![]()
57
Missing Person, The
76
Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, The
77
Mother
50
My Name is Khan
xx
Neil Young Trunk Show
49
Nine
67
North Face
64
October Country
67
Off and Running
52
Paranoids, The
40
Phyllis and Harold
49
Pop Star on Ice
49
Private Lives of Pippa Lee, The
74
Prodigal Sons
xx
Promised Lands (Re-release)
89
Prophet, A![]()
76
Red Riding Trilogy, The
57
Runaways, The
32
Saint John of Las Vegas
83
Secret of Kells, The![]()
69
September Issue, The
36
Serious Moonlight
57
Severe Clear
63
Shinjuku Incident, The
77
Single Man, A
76
Still Bill
34
Stolen
xx
Suicide Girls Must Die!
52
Tales from the Script
74
Terribly Happy
74
That Evening Sun
47
To Die for Tano
19
To Save a Life
63
Toe to Toe
69
Town Called Panic, A
54
Until the Light Takes Us
60
Videocracy
80
Vincere
66
Waiting for Armageddon
45
White on Rice
82
White Ribbon![]()
xx
White Stripes Under Great White Northern Lights, The
43
Women in Trouble
xx
Word is Out
64
Yellow Handkerchief, The
64
Young Victoria, The
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Fantastic Mr. Fox

Universal acclaim
Based on 33 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 95 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Adventure | Animation | Comedy
Written by:
Wes Anderson
Noah Baumbach
Directed by: Wes Anderson
Release Date:
Theatrical: November 13, 2009
DVD: March 23, 2010
Running Time: 87 minutes, Color
Origin: USA | UK
Summary
RATING: PG for action, smoking and slang humor
Starring George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Wally Wolodarsky, Eric Anderson, Michael Gambon, Willem Dafoe, Owen Wilson, and Jarvis Cocker
Mr. and Mrs. Fox live an idyllic home life with their son Ash and visiting young nephew Kristopherson. But after 12 years, the bucolic existence proves too much for Mr Fox’s wild animal instincts. Soon he slips back into his old ways as a sneaky chicken thief and in doing so, endangers not only his beloved family, but the whole animal community. Trapped underground and with not enough food to go around, the animals band together to fight against the evil Farmers - Boggis, Bunce and Bean - who are determined to capture the audacious, fantastic Mr. Fox at any cost. (20th Century Fox)
Also On The Web: Inernet Movie Database Official Studio Website
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Village Voice Scott Foundas
For the reportedly painstaking labor it took to create, the film is a marvel to behold--with wonderful shifts in perspective, an intensely tactile design, and an intentional herky-jerkiness of motion that only enriches the make-believe atmosphere.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
With its virtuoso tomfoolery, Fantastic Mr. Fox is like a homegrown Wallace and Gromit caper. To Wes Anderson: More, please!
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
Anderson has pulled off the most elusive of goals: He's made a nonchalant masterpiece, a movie that feels dog-eared and loved before it's even reached our hands.
Read Full Review >Slate Dana Stevens
You don't want to watch this movie, you want to climb inside it and play.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
Witty and wonderful, Fantastic Mr. Fox is the perfect Thanksgiving entertainment.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
The result is an instant classic. The material allows Anderson to neutralize the most irritating aspects of his work (the precociousness, the sense of white-bread privilege) and maximize the most endearing (the comic timing, the dollhouse ordering of invented worlds).
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
A pleasantly cerebral experience, exhilarating and fizzy, that goes to your head like too much Champagne.
Read Full Review >The New York Times A.O. Scott
In some ways his (Anderson) 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.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
A captivating entertainment for the holiday season and well beyond.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Sheri Linden
Anderson has created a world as stylized and inventive as anything he's done... "Fox" is a visual delight.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones
This is an animated film that happily has room for both an existentialist dread of death and a grinning joie de vivre.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
These animals aren't catering to anyone in the audience. We get the feeling they're intensely leading their own lives without slowing down for ours.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
An adventure in pure imagination that plays to the smart kid in all of us.
Read Full Review >St. Louis Post-Dispatch Staff (Not credited)
Most of all, it’s a magical feat, one that turns puppets into personalities and an English meadow into Anderson’s world.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
By forgoing actual human beings, the director has made his most charming, least annoyingly fey film - a thing of lovely comic wisdom.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
Has its pleasures, foremost being its look – a sophisticated puppet primitivism backdropped by near-psychedelic colorations.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
For all the ostensible immaturity of its form, Fantastic Mr. Fox is the most grown-up thing the director has done in years.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman
The result is a visual treasure that successfully blends deadpan quirkiness with a wry realism rarely seen in any film, let alone one for children.
Read Full Review >Empire Ian Nathan
Genuinely original: a silly, hilarious and oddly profound adaptation for adult-sized children.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
The film's style, paradoxically both precious and rough-hewn, positions this as the season's defiantly anti-CGI toon, and its retro charms will likely appeal more strongly to grown-ups than to moppets; it's a picture for people who would rather drive a 1953 Jaguar XK 120 than a new one.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Tasha Robinson
This is no more a kids’ movie for kids than "Where The Wild Things Are"; it’s a film strictly for Wes Anderson fans of all ages. By now, they should know who they are.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
It's an intriguing match of material and filmmaker. Dahl's distinctive, edgy storytelling seems to fit well with Anderson's idiosyncratic worldview and visuals.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Amy Biancolli
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.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Ann Hornaday
Fantastic Mr. Fox imparts lessons as profound as "The Road's" about love and gratitude and awareness of others. It just has more fun doing it.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
If there's an argument against the film (and, admittedly, it's not much of an argument), it's that the movie may not be suitably childish to appeal to younger viewers.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
Mr. Fox's old-fashioned, hand-crafted animation is one of its main attractions. Another is Anderson's whimsical, dry humor, a natural for this tale of a crafty, dapper fox.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
The tale may be Dahl's, but there's a whole new wag to it – this is decidedly, weirdly and, at best, wonderfully a Wes Anderson movie.
Read Full Review >New Orleans Times-Picayune Mike Scott
Even though it's right there in the title, "fantastic" might be a touch hyperbolic in describing director Wes Anderson's stop-motion adaptation of Roald Dahl's The Fantastic Mr. Fox, but only by a whisker.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
I’m flummoxed as to why the movie left me feeling up in the air, as opposed to over the moon. Partly, I think, it’s a matter of how Anderson’s sense of humor rubs up against that of the book’s author, Roald Dahl.
Read Full Review >Time Out New York Keith Uhlich
It’s unfortunate that the result is so unaffecting, especially in light of all the things the director does right.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Matthew Sorrento
The animals are often caught in a stare as if they, too, are looking for the tale that Anderson forgot.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.8 (out of 10) based on 95 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Kenneth S gave it a4:
I felt it was just an average film with average characters that didn't move me at all. I appreciated the stop-motion animation and the beautiful score, but the story was boring and rather tedious. It's not as witty or humorous as Roald Dahl's fantastic book.
Sandi C gave it a0:
This was the worst movie I have ever seen next to "Mountains of the Moon"...I was with a group of 8 of us, and not a single person including the kids had one thing good to say about it when if finally ended...boring, boring, boring, dumb!! I kept wanting to leave, but thought it had to get better...never did! It was 90 min. I'll never get back! Although it felt like days sitting there being annoyed! Can't figure out what the hype is all about because it was BAD!!
Tim D gave it a10:
This may have been the single most enjoyable movie of 2009. The visual style lends to an all pervasive sense of playfulness that never slips, even in more serious moments. The script is excellent and all the actors deliver their lines perfectly. There is not a film I saw this year I would recommend more readily.
ultra fatty gave it a0:
Quite simply the laziest and worst attempt at film making I have ever had the misfortune of sitting through.
Ryan F gave it a10:
Amazing movie, great cast, and just plain awesome. are all words i would use to describe this movie. with its great sense of humor, and perfect timing on all the jokes makes this one of my favorite movies ever.
Frank G gave it a0:
Unwatchable. Not funny for adults, dull for kids. There are no entertaining issues here, just a waste of talent. It isn't clear why this nostalgic amateurish animation technique was used, but it looks like a student film. Though it looks like critics were impressed by A-list talent working on this kind of movie, the big question for the rest of us is what cellular service they used to phone in these performances.
Seth B gave it a10:
Best film of '09. Saw it twice and will but it right wen it comes out on DVD. Its a witty, lovable film in a sea of unlikable crap to come out this year (transformers 2, G.I. Joe) No matter what genre it says, it is not a kids movie. They won't get most of the jokes that Wes put in. In fact, he had to add a censor word to replace what were originally swears(the word is Cus) He did this because it was based of a kids book so he had to make it kid friendly. If you haven't seen it yet, see it on DVD.
