Synopsis and Movie Mr. Fox : Sneak into a henhouse to steal chickens. They’re caught in a cage on the way out because Mr. Fox sees a trap and can’t resist the temptation to spring it. As they hear someone coming, Mrs. Fox reveals that she’s pregnant and makes Mr. Fox promise that if they get away, he’ll give up raiding farms.Cut to a few years later: the Foxes evidently escaped and now live underground with their slightly odd son, Ash. Mr. Fox is working a safe job as a journalist. Against the advice of Badger, his attorney, he moves his family into a larger and finer home inside a tree on a hill. The treehouse has a good view of the nearby farms of Boggis, Bunce, and Bean.
Ash is immediately hostile when his cousin Kristofferson joins the family for an extended visit because his father is sick. He makes the inoffensive Kristofferson sleep under a table in the bedroom they share. Ash feels threatened because Kristofferson appears to be good at everything. Kristofferson even succeeds at whackbat, a cricket-like game whose baroque rules are explained by Coach Skip though he’s never played it before. Meanwhile, Mr. Fox plots with Kiley, the treehouse’s caretaker, to raid the Boggis, Bunce and Bean farms. They take Kristofferson but not Ash along on the raids, which further deepens Ash’s resentment. Mr. Fox is careful to conceal these outings from Felicity, who nevertheless becomes suspicious when unexplained food appears in their larder. She warns Fox, “if what I think is happening is happening — it better not be.”
The success of the raids leads the three angry farmers to set up a stakeout at the treehouse, where they shoot off Fox’s tail before the animals run back inside. The farmers try to dig them out, but the Foxes dig faster. Eventually they find their way into the sewers, where they join forces with many other animals made homeless by the farmers’ destruction of their hill. These neighbors are none too pleased with Fox for bringing this revenge down on them all.
Mr. Fox, though penitent, is irrepressible; he soon marshals the animals, calling them by their Latin names and noting each one’s special talent. He organizes a tunneling project to burrow under all three farms and make away with all of Boggis’s chickens, all of Bunce’s ducks and geese, and all of Bean’s turkeys, apples, and cider. Ash and Kristofferson slip away from the celebration that follows this megaraid; they aim to get Fox’s tail back from Bean. However, the closest they get to the tail is seeing it on TV — Bean is wearing it as a necktie. Worse, Mrs. Bean catches Kristofferson, and Bean plans to use him to catch Mr. Fox.
