This week we the Andrews consumed Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr. Fox three ways: audio, video, and print. My almost-four-year-old son is a great lover of audiobooks—our favorites until this point have been Stuart Little and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He sits, hands folded, near the speaker, staring into the middle distance, internalizing the stories until he can finish most every sentence in the book. I am proud of him, but this is no brag on our parenting—his sister does not share this intense focus (I’m proud of her too).

After listening to the book several times (this version, wonderfully read by Chris O’Dowd), we watched Wes Anderson’s adaptation for Family Move Night last night. I have seen it a few times, and remember absolutely loving it, so I was surprised by how uncomfortable I was watching it with my toddlers. Wes Anderson’s version of the story is hilarious, sharp, and faithful to Roald Dahl’s aesthetic; but his Mr. Fox is not Fantastic.

Let’s start with the book.

If you haven’t yet encountered the story, it’s about three mean farmers (Boggis, Bunce, and Bean) who decide it’s time to snuff out the fox that has been stealing their poultry. They camp outside his home, shoot off his tail, and then try to dig him out in increasingly elaborate ways. Meanwhile, it falls to Mr. Fox to save his family (and all the other animals caught in the crossfire) from gunfire and starvation.

In the book, happily, Mr. Fox is up to the task. He is Fantastic, after all.

His first brainwave is to outdig the farmers. When they come with shovels, he yells, “‘I’ve got it! Come on! There’s not a moment to lose! Why didn’t I think of it before!’ ‘Think of what, Dad?’ ‘A fox can dig quicker than a man!’ shouted Mr. Fox, beginning to dig. ‘Nobody in the world can dig as as quick as a fox!’” And when this first plan works, here is his wife’s response: “And Mrs. Fox said to her children, ‘I should like you to know that if it wasn’t for your father we should all be dead by now. Your father is a fantastic fox.’ Mr. Fox looked at his wife and she smiled. He loved her more than ever when she said things like that.” Now, look: Mr. Fox is full of himself. He is a wordy fox, a self-satisfied fox, a flattered fox. But this incident with the shovels also demonstrates several other things: The fox family is a solid team. They love each other and look after each other and work together. And Mr. Fox’s ideas work.

The true mark of Mr. Fox’s Fantastic-ness, however, is not his cleverness; it is that he is careful. He is careful from the very beginning of the book—in Chapter 3, Dahl writes, “He was always especially careful when coming out from his hole.” Only this care saves him from being killed on the farmers’s first attempt. Later, when everyone is trapped underground, he realizes that the only way to avoid starvation is to tunnel under the farms and right up into their chicken houses and store rooms. He is careful in this plan as well. Here he is leaving Boggis’s chicken house: “Mr. Fox reached up and pulled the floorboards back into place. He did this with great care. He did it so that no one could tell they had ever been moved.” And again, in Bunce’s storeroom: “‘We mustn’t overdo it,’ he said. ‘Mustn’t give the game away. Mustn’t let them know what we’ve been up to. We must be neat and tidy and take just a few of the choicest morsels.’” Mr. Fox steals primarily to feed his family, not his ego (though perhaps it feeds both). And so he takes care.

In the end—and indeed, throughout the whole story—Mr. Fox’s ingenuity and care is recognized and appreciated by his community. Yes, Badger is furious for a while that Mr. Fox has gotten all the animals into this predicament (“‘I know it’s your fault!’ said Badger furiously. ‘And the farmers are not going to give up till they’ve got you. Unfortunately that means us as well. It means everyone on the hill’”). But when Mr. Fox solves the problem (which he has already done by the time he meets Badger here), all is forgiven. In the end, the animals all sit down to a great feast:

“At last, Badger stood up. He raised his glass of cider and called out, “A toast! I want you all to stand and drink a toast to our dear friend who has saved our lives this day—Mr. Fox!”

“To Mr. Fox!” they all shouted, standing up and raising their glasses. “To Mr. Fox! Long may he live!”

Then Mrs. Fox got shyly to her feet and said, “I don’t want to make a speech. I just want to say one thing, and it is this: MY HUSBAND IS A FANTASTIC FOX.”

Mr. Fox receives all the accolades of his ingenuity. He has covered his tracks and his people are safe and fed. The animals decide to live underground, stealing food from under the farmers’s noses, safe and well-fed and in community. And the farmers sit in the rain, waiting for Mr. Fox to emerge, well and completely bamboozled. Mr. Fox’s triumph is complete.

I think it’s safe to say that Wes Anderson’s Mr. Fox is smack in the middle of a midlife crisis. In this version, he has promised his wife that he will give up stealing chickens (something Dahl’s Mr. Fox never does, and is never asked to do). He steals from Boggis, Bunce, and Bean in secret, without telling her. He is an obtuse father to his son Ash, who wants desperately to be an athlete (like his dad), and suffers in the shadow of his talented cousin Kristofferson. Mr. Fox, in fact, recruits Kristofferson to help with his midnight heists, turning his own son away. He wants to live above ground because living underground “makes him feel poor.” He is rude, interrupting Badger’s toast at the feast. The highest praise he gets from his wife is, “You really are a quote-unquote Fantastic Mr. Fox.” At one point, she tells him that she loves him—but she should never have married him. Damn.

Worst of all, when he tunnels under the three farms, as he does in the book, and steals food to feed the starving animals under the hill, he is NOT careful. He bursts into the room where the rest of the animals are waiting, and says, “We took everything.” Everything?! Oh, Foxy. This is a far cry from “We mustn’t overdo it…Mustn’t give the game away.” And of course, the next cut shows Farmer Bean on the phone, receiving the news: “They took everything?” And the plot of the movie continues after that of the book ends.

Look—I love this movie. I remember how hard I laughed the first time I saw it. The family dynamics are painful because they are incisively drawn. I’m not even sad that the movie doesn’t end with the feast, and that the animals get washed out by cider, not least because we immediately get the incredible line from Kylie the opossum: “APPLE JUICE. APPLE JUICE FLOOD.” I’m not mad at any of Wes Anderson’s choices, and I think all of the character dynamics he extrapolated find their roots in the original story. I even think Roald Dahl would like the movie. But I think he would probably agree that it’s not for little kids.

If I had seen the movie more recently, I probably wouldn’t have needed telling this. And I’m not writing this to warn parents of toddlers to wait on this one (though, if it’s relevant to you, take my warning and just watch it with adults—like, tomorrow). But I do want to say a word in favor of the unproblematic Good Guy.

Roald Dahl’s Mr. Fox is a hero in the old-fashioned way. He’s not subversive, he’s not in a gray area, he’s just good guy with good ideas who saves his community. This doesn’t mean he has no foibles (here he is when he finds Boggis’s chicken house #1: “I’ve done it!” he yelled. “I’ve done it first time! I’ve done it! I’ve done it!…It’s exactly what I was aiming at! I hit it slap in the middle! First time! Isn’t that fantastic! And, if I may say so, rather clever!”). But any pride, any arrogance, is tempered by the way he provides for his people. It’s also tempered by the fact that he’s right—he is rather clever. He is a fantastic fox.

I like this for two reasons. First and most obvious, I think it’s good to provide our children with moral clarity. It’s good to give them heroes who succeed against the murderous villains, and who do so with temperance and good humor. I want my children to grow up knowing that their family is their safe space, that we are all on the same team, and that we look out for each other. And Fantastic Mr. Fox models that beautifully.

The second reason I like Dahl’s version of Mr. Fox is that it’s honestly more surprising. We are so used to the subversive version of the story. “Oh, you think he’s a hero? It’s worse than you know.” I am never surprised, watching a story where the husband is insecure, the wife has trust issues, the child feels unloved. The subversive version of the story can be well-told and worth watching, can say all kinds of good or true things. But tell me the story of a hero on whom everything depends, whose actions have landed him with the responsibility for an entire community—and who carries his burden with grace? Who does not fail but succeeds? Who is loved and appreciated for his efforts, and in fact, his personality? That story is starting to feel subversive to me, because it’s less often told. I get a feeling in my chest (it’s hope) reading a story like this, and it feels good when hope carries me all the way to the end.

Let’s read that story to our kids, sometimes, and to ourselves. Let’s live in hope of a hero who does not suck, but saves—who is not “fantastic,” but Fantastic.

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