La merveilleuse histoire de Henry Sugar et trois autres contes

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More (2024) is the final movie in Wes Anderson's filmography that I watched for the first time ever and it was awesome.

Positives for The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More (2024): The short stories are very engaging and fun to watch with a fun cast. The cast does a great job with their performances and you have Ralph Fiennes, Benedict Cumberbatch, Dev Patel, Ben Kingsley, Richard Ayoade and Rupert Friend are playing different roles into these short stories. The set designs look great and are having fun with their characters. The dialogue is amazing and very witty. While these stories are separate from each other, they have their own stories with themes that come fill circle by the end of each segment. And finally, this movie has excellent pacing that kept me invested during each short story.

Overall, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More (2024) is a wonderful anthology movie from Wes Anderson and I can't wait for his newest movie coming out later this month.

Although I have hundreds of idols in the domain of cinema, there are only three heroes that I worship/idolize in literature. They are Jules Verne, Agatha Christie, and Roald Dahl. The latter, I have been fascinated with for as long as I can remember. I remember reading "The Twits" and shortly after "The Witches" at young age, and immediately got hooked on Dahl's unique, oddly ominous, and mildly disturbing writing style. Roald Dahl does not treat his youthful readers like feeble children and describes things as explicit and sadistic as they are, which is something I greatly appreciated even as a small child.

There have been several wondrous film adaptations of Dahl's books, some of which I also really adore, but none of them really captures the true genius of Roald Dahl's style and persona. Maybe "The Fantastic Mr. Fox" (2009) does, but I haven't seen that yet. I'm willing to believe the praiseful ratings and reviews of that one, tough, since it also comes from writer/director Wes Anderson. "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three Others" is also from Anderson, and ...it...is... GREAT!

Wes Anderson and Roald Dahl are a perfect match. They are both eccentric, extraordinary imaginative, and dreamy. Moreover, Anderson's approach is stupendous with live on-screen narration (even with Ralph Fiennes as a striking Roald Dahl himself), stop motion techniques and partially animated set pieces... As if we are looking straight into Dahl's head. The film is an omnibus with one main feature and three short stories. "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar" is Dahl at his purest and utmost genius! Say what you want, but nobody else but Roald Dahl could have invented such a bizarrely far-fetched but compelling and spirited tale with gifted traveling circus artists and selfish aristocrats turning into noble Samaritans. The script is a spitfire of spoken monologues (which goes for all the stories, by the way) but there is never a dull moment, and the performances - notably from Benedict Cumberbatch and Ben Kingsley - are sublime.

The three other stories also deserve detailed praise, in fact, but I will make this review too long. Just know that they feature typical Road Dahl themes (like extreme bullying, reptiles and rodents, ...) and brilliant performances as well. "The Wonderful etc..." is a must-see for fans of the legendary writer. And if you're not a fan yet, it's time to become one.

These four short stories are brilliant. With Wes' style it's like a match made in heaven. The stories almost feel like bed time stories. And the cast choice was superb. The only member i didnt like was Richard Ayoade, just because his lifeless acting and voice annoys me 😂. First time watching all these in the big combined film

Story 1 - ' The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar', was great seeing Benedict in a Wes production. And the arc it took was supering interesting.

Story 2 - 'The Swan', was effortlessly told by Rupert Friend. Never seen him before, very talented.

Story 3 - 'The Rat Catcher', Ralph finnes at his best. Diving into this character, creepy, the voice, costume and mannerisms

Story 4 - 'Poison', was brilliant as Dave Patel & Bendicts chemistry was great. Would love to see these two together for future wes productions. Was quite comical which I loved.

A series of four adaptations by Wes Anderson of Roald Dahl stories. 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.

However, while none of the episodes are terrible, they are a bit of a mixed bag.

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar - 7/10

An interesting plot, some highly engaging characters, some spot-on performances from an all-star cast (Ralph Fiennes, Benedict Cumberbatch, Ben Kingsley, Dev Patel, Richard Ayoade, all in multiple roles) and Anderson's use of seemingly basic effects, props and settings create a whimsical, child-like atmosphere.

On the negative side the matter-of-fact tone makes you feel like you're consuming bullet points of a plot rather than being engrossed in the movie. It's the downside to the whimsicalness, I guess. In addition, I was expecting a punchier ending which never came.

The Swan - 8/10

The best of the lot, with Dahl's emotional story of innocence-meets-thuggery set to Anderson's clever backdrops and special effects and imbued with the usual Anderson whimsicalness and child-like atmosphere. Rupert Friend is great as the narrator.

Not perfect though. The film seemed set up for a powerful ending but this never came, just fizzling out. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar was similar - great journey, lacklustre destination. Hopefully this isn't a characteristic of all these films.

The Rat Catcher - 6/10

From the previous two, 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.

Poison - 6/10

Poison is similar to the other three short films in the series in that it contains narration with the narrator talking in short, bullet-point-like sentences, an engaging story and some quirky backdrops and props. The backdrops are bit less of a factor here, due to this film being set almost entirely in one location.

The other three had a nasty habit of leaving you dangling at the end - setting you up with an engaging, seemingly set up for a powerful ending and then just fizzling out, sans punchline. This one seemed to be heading to buck the trend but, alas, it is more of the same. There is a half-theme around ungraciousness and racism at the end but it really isn't developed well enough to have an impact.

Interesting enough, just don't expect too much of the conclusion.

4 unique shorts wonderfully adapted from Rohd Dahl's literature with Wes Anderson's direction as a match made in heaven. The dialogue is wonderfully narrated straight from the book while visually shown off like a vividly pretty yet loosely managed stage play. All 4 stories are quite interesting, with Poison being the most tense, The ratcatcher being the most peculiar, The Swam being the saddest, and Henry Sugar being the most whimsical. Each story stands on their own, but together, they all make something wonderful. I'm so glad that Wes Anderson finally won an Oscar thanks to this special. It's about time!