Sometimes, it pays to be slow! The first short in this anthology was released by Netflix in 2023, and subsequently won Best Live Action Short Film at the Oscars, and I always really wanted to get to it. But since I knew that I was never going to write about it, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar stayed on the backburner. Now, I get to review Wes Anderson’s Roald Dahl inspired collection of short works as one big movie, and how happy I be 🤗 I think the last anthology movie I saw was The Ballad of Buster Scruggs – I don’t know how popular anthologies used to be, but you rarely see them now. The only other recent one I can think of is the V/H/S series 🤔
The first short, entails a rich man, Henry Sugar (Benedict Cumberbatch), discovering a book remarking the true accounts of a man who could see without using his eyes. Sugar coverts this ability in order to cheat at blackjack, and spends a great deal of time learning this skill for himself. After that, the “Three More” aspect of this movie’s title, bring about the Roald Dahl shorts, “The Swan”, “The Rat Catcher” and “Poison”, about a boy being bullied, a grubby pest inspector, and a snake in a precarious place, respectively 😇
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More is like a fantastical school production with an unlimited budget. I was distracted for the first few minutes, even to the point of asking myself, “do I like Anderson’s signature style?”; but I was merely setting into the groove. I pondered on Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things, and how that movie expertly held style secondary to plot, and I liked that, while this one’s backdrop threatened to jostle for attention against the story. But, very quickly, it’s all fine, and I even wondered, how else would you tell this tale of Henry Sugar on screen, when it is basically just three characters giving their detailed points of views, without using narration? The speed with which our actors have to talk for this series of shorts is a glamour point – very talented individuals, the lot of them, and I wonder how many takes a lot of this took 😊 Is this the year of Dev Patel? Following on from how impressed I was with Monkey Man, it very well could be. And whilst I am already a massive fan of the guy, he fits in seamlessly with A-listers, Ralph Fiennes and Benedict Cumberbatch, and even outshines Ben Kingsley, Richard Ayoade and Rupert Friend. It was a choice to have the lot of them play more than one character, often in the same short, and I think it ultimately contributes to the feel that this is like an amateur play; along with a carefully placed stagehand or two, of course 😊
A fun part of reviewing an anthology is getting to rank the shorts in order of engagement 🤗 As an avid reader of Roald Dahl, a British literature legend, I know I had already read “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” and “The Swan”, as they were familiar, but “The Rat Catcher” and “Poison” were completely new to me. I found all the shorts invigorating, with perhaps “The Rat Catcher” as the weakest, due to it being too similar to “‘Henry Sugar”, about an individual with an unusual expertise, yet with a softer ending. Although, a benefit of that short, is watching Ralph Fiennes shrivel about as if he was rat-like, and I’m always there for any time Fiennes wants to embody a new character – I know he played Voldemort through the Harry Potter series, but he’s more like that snake creature in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, in that he can always fill any space perfectly. “Poison” was easily the most palpitating of the tales, no doubt inspired by Dahl’s own time serving the air force through Africa, and “The Swan” is somewhat outrageous by the end, although frightful throughout with the threat from the bullies coming without limitations. “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” is aptly named, and a ditty I was glad to revisit for a second time. So, in order, I’m definitely going “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar”, “Poison”, “The Swan”, “The Ratcatcher”, from best to worst, but there’s not necessarily a clear weak spot to be a seen.
Like is most commonly the case with Wes Anderson, as far as I can tell, you can walk away from this movie with an understanding that it’s style that conquers all, much resembling a scrapbook in design. While I can be on the fence about it, it’s evident that Anderson and I certainly share an adoration for Roald Dahl, with this being his second adaptation of Dahl’s work, following on from 2009’s Fantastic Mr. Fox; and so he’s alright with me – a friend of a friend is a friend, after all 😎 Good actors also flock to him, to be a part of his most colourful designs, and I enjoyed watching these actors flex their muscles, embracing this quick, hands-on, and highly articulate style of storytelling. I’m really glad I got to watch this together as a set too – it actually might’ve annoyed me to watch this in pieces instead of in this way, where I couldn’t have grasped the project’s full scope. And there’s plenty more short stories out there; I wonder if Anderson will go again.
3.5
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