Fantastic Mr. Fox (Original Soundtrack)

The soundtrack to Wes Anderson’s critically acclaimed animated feature Fantastic Mr. Fox, which includes prerecorded material and Alexandre Desplat’s original score, takes the listener on a pleasurable journey providing a variety of shadings to the film’s story (based on Roald Dahl's classic story) about a fox who steals from three farmers to feed his family. Folk singer Burl Ives is represented by three catchy songs, “Fooba Wooba John,” “Buckeye Jim,” and “The Grey Goose.” The Beach Boys’ classic “Heroes and Villains” is included and so is the group’s version of the Hammerstein and Kern chestnut, “Ol’ Man River.” “Fantastic Mr. Fox a.k.a. Petey’s Song,” a collaboration between Anderson, director Noah Baumbach, and the wry British pop singer Jarvis Cocker, is a bit of old-timey music. And there’s room for the Bobby Fuller Four’s Latin-tinged rave-up “Let Her Dance,” Art Tatum’s version of “Night and Day,” and the Wellingtons’ “The Ballad of Davy Crockett.” Desplat’s cues sound great, and on “Just Another Dead Rat In a Garbage Pail (Behind a Chinese Restaurant)” he turns in a track that recalls Italian maestro Ennio Morricone.