Fantastic Mr. Fox

The film is clearly set in England, according to Mr.

Fox's morning paper and other clues.

But the wolf's alpine backdrop is like something out of the Rocky Mountains, and Kiley is an American opossum--there are no opossums or any marsupial relatives native to Europe.

On the wackbat-trophy's champion-list there is an "M.

Silvery-Marmoset", a creature found only in very limited areas in Brazil.

The rabid beagle's tag reads Canis familiaris, an obsolete classification.

Tame dogs (familiaris) are now considered to be a subspecies of the wolf Canis lupus (which Fox correctly identified on the mountain), rather than their own species.

Since news of species revisions travels slowly, it is realistic that not everyone has heard of the change.

In long-shots, there is a building between the second and third of the four silos on the Bean farm ("E" and "A").

In closer angles, the silos are equally spaced and the building is not readily visible.

When Latin names of the animals are displayed in the film they are not written in the correct format.

"Latin" names, more correctly termed scientific names, are standardized within the scientific community worldwide and written in a specific format, e.

Genus species with the genus capitalized, the species written in lowercase, and both written either in italics or simply underlined.

The film shows both genus and species capitalized.

Frank Bean, inside a caravan, on the phone says "They took everything, let me call you back Petey.

" After a quick burst of anger he exits the caravan, and Petey is sitting right outside fixing a bike, without a phone (not that you'd talk to someone on the phone who is right outside anyway).

Early in the movie, Mr.

Fox sits at the breakfast table with a newspaper.

In it, he notices a picture of a tree for sale, which has landscape (horizontal) orientation.

When he cuts the picture, he does so as if it was a portrait (vertical orientation).

In the next scene, he holds the clipping up, and it is in landscape orientation again.

Ash says he doesn't have a bandit hat but a modified tube sock, but the hat/sock he puts on has a clearly visible heel, identifying it as a crew, rather than a tube, sock.

Bean's helicopter is clearly modeled off of the helicopter in _"Magnum, P.

" (1980)_ (qv) and has the exact same paint scheme when viewed in long shots.

However, a close up shot of the pilot in the cockpit shows the frame of the front canopy to be painted yellow, whereas it should be red in that section.

When Mr.

Fox looks out the tree's window and notices the distant Boggis, Bunce and Bean farms for the first time, they are lined up in that order left-to-right on hilltops.

But when he later shows a map of the farms to Kiley, the Boggis farm is clearly situated between Bean and Bunce.

On Clive Badger's desk there is a single paper clip near the pen-holder.

But in the reverse view on Mr.

Fox, the paper clip is missing.

At the shooting, Boggis's double-barrel shotgun fires at least five times in quick succession without re-loading.

"We're all different. Especially him.

Mr. Fox decides to end his wild days by doing one last raid.

The story of Fantastic Mr. Fox follows the lives of the Fox family – Mr (George Clooney), Mrs(Meryl Streep), and their son(Jason Schwartzman) – and their animal neighbors and friends.

When my friend told me that this was Wes Anderson's first animated film, I didn't believe him. This is the only other film from Wes Anderson that I consider to be a masterpiece.

While Fantastic Mr. Fox is quite definitely Wes Anderson's most commercial film so far, it treads the line between Hollywood and art-house surprisingly well, and manages to be an extremely intelligent family movie in the strictest meaning of the term - a movie to be enjoyed by both children and adults, each on a different levels.

All of the trademark Wes Anderson quirkiness, but somehow minus everything that usually makes that quirkiness so irritating.

I can't believe I'm going against the grain on this. It's not a terrible film, in fact it's absolutely charming to look at, but when the gorgeous visuals and aesthetic are taken away, I'm left with a pretty muddy narrative and flat characterization.

The plot development of Mr. Fox and the Fox family couldnt have been executed better.

"Fantastic Mr. Fox" is a great piece of animation and the use of stop-motion is fantastic in this movie.