Le Preneur de Rats

Garage owner Claude has a rat problem. He hires an expert to deal with the problem. The Rat Man is truly an expert in his field to the point of resembling a rat himself. While Claude and his employee are fascinated by his methods they are also quite unsettled by him.

Another of Wes Anderson's four-episode short story-series, all adaptations of Roald Dahl stories. The others in the series are The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, The Swan and Poison.

Wes Anderson adapting a Roald Dahl story seems a perfect combination: the clever innocence of Dahl's writing, Anderson's whimsical, stylised direction. It's been done before, to great effect; 'Fantastic Mr Fox' (2009) was brilliant.

Having already watched two of Anderson's Roald Dahl-based short films, the style and presentation of the films are a given. A quirky, reasonably engaging story, narration with the narrator talking in short, bullet-point-like sentences, highly-stylised backdrops and props, great performances (in this case from Ralph Fiennes, Rupert Friend and Richard Ayoade).

A less positive aspect has been that while the story is engaging, it has no punchline. It simply fizzles out. The Rat Catcher is no exception.

Here it is a touch worse in that the story never really seems to fully get going anyway. At least the other two had a fair degree of momentum.

Still, it's interesting and watchable enough.

Well now, I had not heard about this 2023 Netflix short film titled "The Rat Catcher" from director Wes Anderson prior to sitting down to watch it. And truth be told, I thought it was an animated short film actually.

I have to say that the "The Rat Catcher" turned out to be a rather unique and enjoyable viewing experience. The story, as written by Roald Dahl and interpreted by Wes Anderson, was oddly entertaining and enjoyable. And the way that it was brought to the screen was some of the most memorable display I have seen in a long, long time.

There are three people on the cast list; that being Richard Ayoade, Ralph Fiennes and Rupert Friend, and some doing some stagehand performances as well. I rather enjoyed the performances of the three actors with speaking parts. And there was just something very unique about it as well, which made it rather memorable and outstanding.

I was genuinely surprised with "The Rat Catcher", and while it is certainly not something that will just sit easily with everyone in the audience, then this is certainly a short film that I would recommend you to sit down and spend 17 minutes on. I was genuinely and wholeheartedly entertained by this unique piece of cinema.

My rating of "The Rat Catcher" lands on a seven out of ten stars.

This Short-story Directed by Wes Anderson and protagonized by Ralph Fiennes (The Rat Catcher). Tells the story of a little town with a rat issue. To solve this problem they resort to a peculiar, misteryous and unorthodox rat Catcher. This story carries you during 17' through a nice story which happens in your ears with the voice of the narrator but also on the screen, So you mix the imagination on books with the comodity that represents watching a TV.

The director creates a perfect mix between movie and audiobook, creating a completely New Genre. Watch it! At the end it's just 17 minutes!

Thanks for reading!

...and yeah, I'm glad I did. At 1.25x the speed, the experience was worth the 17 minutes. Happy customer here.

Sorry that I no longer buy Wes Anderson's seemingly-genuine tricks. Life Aquatic was great but anything other than that, I could live without.

As for this one: Yep, there's artistic value in his approach. But so what? Any film-tv student can do this much. Problem is, you need a pumped-up name in order have your simple solutions be valued. It takes Wes Anderson to propose such experimental shorts to whoever is gonna be in on them. And yeah, the result is satisfactory.

The cast works and I believe Roald Dahl would be happy with the outcome had he been around to see how miserably certain other adaptations do.

Very strange fast paced short by legendary artist Wes Anderson, I can see how this has mixed vibes. I enjoy most anything by Wes but this is just weird and to complicated, the movies are much better! Rat Catcher is peculiar, slight horror vibes, and outrageous. This would be different if it was the beginning of Wes's career I think he's losing his magic touch with this sort of thing although I love the creepy vibes Wes defiantly has the potential to do horror if he wanted to. I was looking for a different short I didn't realize there's several of them they should be interesting and artsy even if not enjoyable as other projects.