As we continue taking a trip down memory lane with Wes Anderson films, it’s time to cover another soundtrack that also features Alexandre Desplat, along with various artists. As delightful and transportive as the original soundtrack for The Grand Budapest Hotel, the Fantastic Mr. Fox original score is a joy ride through and through.
And while there’s something about Anderson’s films and the scores that follow that feels especially suitable to listen to in the early months of autumn, nothing hits the way the Fantastic Mr. Fox original score does. It’s comprised of 25 songs and hardly lasts an hour, but it’s a thrill we can’t get enough of, nonetheless.
Tracks like “High-Speed French Train,” “Mr. Fox in the Fields,” “Whack-Bat Majorette,” “Bean’s Secret Cider Cellar,” “Great Harrowsford Square,” and “Canis Lupus” all feel like they belong in a theme park of some sorts. The entire soundtrack ultimately feels like it should be playing at a theme park, but that’s neither here nor there. Or, maybe someday, we’ll live in a whimsical world of an Anderson-inspired theme park that’ll be every cinephile’s dream.
The point is, much like most of his soundtracks, there’s something indescribably transcendent about Desplat’s work that makes it feel like we’re in another time—another place. Somewhere colorful, glowing with sounds that make it easy to feel as though we can accomplish things. And the same childlike wonder present in all scores like (The Grand Budapest Hotel or even Little Women) provides the kind of escapism that feels hopeful even when it isn’t.
While not all songs are available to stream on Spotify in the US, what we get is still enough to put us in a cozy place from which we would like to be unbothered.
Listen to the Fantastic Mr. Fox original score below and let us know which tracks are your favorites.