In Theaters: Fantastic Mr. Fox

Anderson gets many opportunities to revel in old-fashioned ingenuity -- a man without a plan, and ideally a really elaborate blueprint, is nothing in Anderson's world -- as Mr. Fox, having plundered too recklessly, is pursued to the ends of his foxhole by the loathsome farmers. Along the way there are winks at the perils of comfort -- having established a decisive victory and some seriously fat times, the wild animals almost immediately begin complaining about things like cell reception -- and nods to the necessarily unkempt line between wild and civil behavior.

Anderson has fun, as always, with a spirited soundtrack that includes The Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones, Jarvis Cocker, killer drum lines, banjo solos and more. He also opens up a cinematic grab bag that includes references to West Side Story (Willem Dafoe voices a debauched, turncoat rat in several of the film's best scenes), the spaghetti western, and a line lifted directly from Rebel Without a Cause; there's something exhilarating in the randomness of the latter, as though Anderson is operating from sheer delight.

The film ends on twin grace notes of triumph and compromise, with fat but unnaturally strange times ahead. With success, as Anderson knows, comes complication, the worldly intrusion of plenty, commerce -- critics -- that can carry you away from your instincts, or cause you to disappear somewhere inside of them. What was needed, as it turns out, was a little wild animal craziness: I'm happy to report that Mr. Anderson has obliged.

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