The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

As much as this is pure Uncut 1100% pure white as the driven snow Wes Anderson, including one of his most thrilling tracking shots and rear-screen projection that made me laugh hard enough for the neighbors to sit up and probably want to check it out for themselves, it is also a perfect distillation of Roald Dahl's perfectly eccentric and wildly over-elaborate storytelling and construction of one plot into another.

Maybe you haven't read Dahl in a while if you were one of those kids who read him a lot (I know he has a reputation today, but he could objectively write comedy and quirk like nobody's business), but even if that's so the recognition of his voice will come back to you like a long dormant dream. It's also fascinating to see the clockwork-theatrical staging from Asteroid City taken even further. I'd ask him why he doesn't direct theater, but then he would look at me like I was a fool - why do that when he has the overwhelming power of control of the Frame of Cinema at his disposal?

The thing about this Henry Sugar film that I like on top of the perfectly calibrated balancing act between very human comedy and quixotic and deadpan fantasy that we know Anderson can do in his sleep (though I imagine as easy as it looks it takes a lot of concentration to get right with DP Yeoman), the performances are just right and add to the flavor of the piece. Call it shallow, but I just enjoy how soothing the voices of Cumberbatch, Dev Patel, Kingsley and even to an extent Fiennes are, like they could almost be ASMR-ing you with the Dahl words that get spun like a marathon sprinter who is running in this precision that dazzles you because it almost is inexplicable (just like, I might posit for comparison, what the men can see with their eyes closed after concentrating hard for days and years on end).

Last but not least: Benedict Cumberbatch in a dress = most unlikely kind of attractive walking cartoon in a dress since Bugs Bunny.