The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar et.al

[Drunk Monk]

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. September 27

Wes Anderson is bringing four short films based on Roald Dahl tales to Netflix.

I watched this, Poison & The Rat Catcher but I fell asleep during the last one. These are painfully Anderson with the actors reading the story as narration and the sets moving about like a play. Cumberbatch, Kingsley, Fiennes & Patel take on multiple roles as they tell their tales, with Fiennes playing Dahl. Quirky, engaging at first for its novelty but the cloyingly annoying as it continues.

Sugar is Cumberbatch developing x-Ray vision through yoga to cheat at blackjack. It was the first one I watched so I was into it. Kingsley is the backstory because he gets this power from a yogi. It was okay because the quirky stuff set a good tempo.

Poison is Cumberbatch with a poisonous krait sleeping on his stomach. This one was funnier mostly because it was Cumberbatch, and he played that part well.

Fiennes played the rat catcher and that was intriguing because it was a departure from his usual roles, but I dozed off because I was sleepy. Not sure if I’ll go back for it. 

This are short tho. Not particularly D00M recommended unless your a huge Anderson fanboi.

[King Bob]

I thought Sugar was pretty good. Much better than Asteroid City, which didn't really work for me

[Drunk Monk]

I haven’t seen Asteroid City.

Wait… are you holding out on us with your review?

The Swan was mostly Rupert Friend - a lovely tale of extreme bullying.

The Rat Catcher was my fav, not only because it had a little stop motion animation, but mostly because Fiennes does an amazing character, reminiscent of Filch (this has an HP factor of 1 with Voldemort but we all knew that already). 

What makes these work is that they are great Dahl stories. Anderson’s take is a tad pretentious in that artsy fartsy way, but to have such fond actors basically read there short stories is delightful.