Magnificent Bastard: Mr. Fox is every bit as fantastic as the book's title suggests, a cunning and stealthy creature who regularly steals the chickens, ducks, geese and turkeys from the foul farmers, Boggis, Bunce, and Bean, using the wind and his surroundings to avoid detection, and bring food home for his family. When the farmers finally corner he and his family and drive them deep underground, Mr. Fox, with the help of his four cubs, dig towards the neighbouring farms, and, from memory alone, he finds Boggis's Chicken House, Number One, Bunce's storehouse, and Bean's secret cider cellar, with enough food to feed not just his starving family, but the other woodland animals affected by the farmers' hunt. Openly affectionate towards his family, not afraid to get his hands dirty, happy to give and take credit where it's due, and charming and persuasive enough to win over a morally reluctant Badger, Mr. Fox ends the story, as the leader and hunter for the other burrowing animals, leaving the obsessed farmers to wait outside his hole in vain.
Squick: There are many details of how the farmers stink, don't take baths, have horrible-tasting disgusting food, etc.
The Wes Anderson film
Adaptation Displacement: Many (especially those outside of the UK) tend to be more familiar with Wes Anderson's film than they are with the original book by Roald Dahl, to where some are unaware that it was an adaptation at all.
"That's just weak songwriting! You wrote a bad song, Petey!"
A strangely built up one that nonetheless has only the smallest thematic connection to the film. Throughout the film, it's repeatedly stressed that Fox has a phobia of wolves. At the very climax of the film when speeding away from the farmers on a motorbike, intense music still playing, they suddenly stop and see a wolf. The wolf doesn't attack them or say anything and it stands against a strangely icy background. The protagonists wave at it, wish it well, and then slowly drive home, the chase apparently having ended. It's supposed to hammer home the idea that - try as he might - Fox will never be a true wild animal due to his anthropomorphic habits, but unless you pick up on the symbology (the wolf isn't anthropomorphised at all, it's set against a backdrop of snowy wilderness as opposed to the road, it doesn't speak, and Fox refers to it as a creature, rather than anything closer to personhood) it seemingly comes out of nowhere.
Director Displacement: Despite being claimed as "A Wes Anderson Film", there were actually two directors. Anderson directed only the voices while animation director Mark Gustafson did all of the animation (and spent more time on set while Anderson would give directions through e-mail). The film's cinematographer even questioned Anderson's role on the project.
What with another film featuring a Loveable Rogue fox having since come out, the scene involving blueberries being shot via projectile and related to drugs is amusingly specifically similar. Ironically, Disney would purchase this movie (via its acquisition with 20th Century Studios), making Mr. Fox the third anthropomorphic Disney fox.
There are some remarks about how Mr. Fox's son Ash "dresses like a girl." The 2023 revision of the book changed Mr. Fox's son to a daughter.
Jerkass Woobie: Ash isn't a bad person at heart and obviously has a lot on his mind. On the other hand, he's shockingly cruel to Kristofferson, sinking so low as to crack jokes about his extremely ill father with him in the next room.
Moral Event Horizon: Regardless of Mr. Fox being a flawed protagonist that causes the conflict by angering them, Boggis, Bunce and Bean definitely cross it by obliterating half of the woods, harming the environment and endangering all the animals in it over a single fox rather than commissioning some expert hunters to try get him.
Owen Wilson's character of Coach Skip functions as this, appearing apparently only to explain (if at all) the rules of Whackbat.
Petey, whose only spoken scene is a song sung by his Ink-Suit Actor Jarvis Cocker. Especially funny for fans of Jarvis who might recognize the dancing.
Popular with Furries: The film has quite a huge following with furries, given the community's long-standing appreciation for anthropomorphic foxes.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Numerous British people complained about the film's "Americanization", as the humans are British and the animals were American, when everyone was British in the book. None of the Americans seemed to care.
To some, the realistic fur and eyes on the puppets can be unsettling.
That and the fact that they might look just like the animated corpses of roadkill.
The dummy-like humans are pretty uncanny looking, especially Bunce and Bean, as they faithfully reflect Dahl's signature "ugly on the inside and out" villains.
What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: Given that the film's based on a Roald Dahl book, this trope was inevitable. Where to begin? Let's start with the fact that they manage to get away with implying the word "fuck" something like two dozen times by simply exchanging it with "cuss" ("The cuss you are", "Clustercuss", "Scared the cuss out of me"). From there, it just gets better. Mr. Fox is a thief; the farmers want to kill Mr. Fox using switchblades and guns (which leads to Mr. Fox having his tail shot off), eventually leading to using excavators and explosives; there's incessant smoking from Mr. Bean, who makes alcoholic cider (and eventually goes batshit crazy); there's a reference to Mrs. Fox being "the town tart" before she settled down; there are multiple injuries sustained by characters varying from scars to burns; Rat is electrocuted and killed by Mr. Fox; and the ending is of the bittersweet variety in which the animals' homes have been destroyed and they now live in the sewers, even though they have a food supply that could last them for decades.
The Woobie: Petey looks like he really needs a hug after Bean berates his song. Poor kid...
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