"My suicide mission has been cancelled. We're replacing it with a go-for-broke rescue mission" – Mr Fox

Roald Dahl and Wes Anderson are two sides of the same coin. Both of them delight in dark whimsy – a child drowning in chocolate here, a stop-motion shark that causes a middle-aged man to reassess his priorities there – but they go about demonstrating this in completely different ways. Anderson prizes order and precision above all else – but Dahl, typified by Quentin Blake's haywire illustrations, is the enemy of sterility.

So when Anderson decided to adapt Dahl's book Fantastic Mr Fox, questions were raised over how successfully their sensibilities would mesh. In the end, it didn't matter. Anderson simply slashed away at the story until it fitted his tastes, albeit by reimagining the whole thing as an Ocean's Eleven-style heist caper. Weirdly, it works.

"In the end we all die, unless you change" – Felicity Fox

Anderson created a much more richly drawn Fox; in the film, he's a newspaper columnist with a complicated family life, ideas above his station, and a habit of clicking his tongue and whistling in a way that would quite obviously be intolerable to live with for any meaningful length of time. He has an estate agent and a tailor and a brilliantly antagonistic lawyer. He's also prone to bouts of existentialism and self-reflection. The key moment of the film comes when he finally admits: "I think I have this thing where I need everyone to think I'm the greatest, the quote-unquote fantastic Mr Fox. And if they aren't completely knocked out and dazzled and kind of intimidated by me, then I don't feel good about myself." A claymation fox coming to terms with a latent narcissistic personality disorder. Very Wes Anderson.

And, you know, not to be a stickler for faithfulness, the book did not contain a long-lost nephew called Kristofferson, a surprisingly detailed karate lesson, or a climactic shootout – covered live by rolling news channels – that ends with the foxes torching an entire town.

"That's just weak songwriting! You wrote a bad song, Petey!" – Franklin Bean

I'll assume that you're rewatching Fantastic Mr Fox – it'd be weird if you weren't, given the spoiler warning you've just read – in which case you're in for a treat. Anderson's attention to detail means that the film becomes even more rewarding second time around, with barely seen book titles and product names to stop and marvel at. It also gives you another chance to admire the abilities of the vocal talents.

As well as Anderson's gang of regular players – Bill Murray has a role, as do Jason Schwartzman, Owen Wilson, Wallace Wolodarsky and Eric Chase Anderson – Fantastic Mr Fox allows prestigious outsiders such as George Clooney and Meryl Streep a chance to shine. They're both terrific, but the show is well and truly stolen by Willem Dafoe's psychotic, alcoholic, West Side Story-obsessed rat, who would have deserved his own film had he not died so prematurely in this one.

Finally, a word about accents. Fantastic Mr Fox is set in an England where all the humans are evil and recognisably English. The goodies, meanwhile, are American. There's a South African, too – a pilot played by Rob Hersov, the vice-president of a private aviation firm – but his role is more ambiguous. What could Anderson be trying to say here?

Observations

• Dressing Mr Fox in exactly the same outfit that Wes Anderson often wears – apparently with material from one of his suits. A subtle autobiographical move, a sly wink or the work of a deranged egotist? Discuss.

• The excerpt from Fox About Town, Mr Fox's newspaper column, contains a nice piece of foreshadowing: "I have never crossed paths with an English wolf, but pardon my French they scare the cuss out of me. What sort of creature sleeps with the windows open? Answer: one with long claws and about 10 stone on yours truly."

• I'm amazed that no GIFs of claymation Jarvis Cocker doing his stop-motion Common People arm-flick exist anywhere on the internet. Someone should really do something about that.

• "Why did they write this in letters cut out of magazines?" "To protect their identities." "Oh, right, but then why did they sign their names? Plus we already knew who they were because they're trying to kill us."

• Can someone hurry up and make a Twits movie now?