For some reason Netflix decided to do a "week" of Wes Anderson adaptations of Roald Dahl short stories, where week equals four days.
Each adaptation has the same approach, the main characters narrate the story directly to the camera, and limited portrayals of actual events. There are very artificial sets and changes are done on screen, as if this was a collection of stage plays. And there are about five main actors who turn up as different characters across and within the stories. This works only because these are short stories, if this continued for a full movie it would be a bit much.
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar goes several stories deep as it tells its tale, and while engaging the sparse portrayal of the story could do with more complexity.
The Swan is the most abstract, with even more telling not showing and walking along long hedge paths.
The Ratcatcher is more of a character piece with the title character showing what it means to go after rats. This also dives a lot into the stage play aspect as well as featuring an animated sequence that, hey, continues the trend I've been following!
Poison is one I think I might have read before? If one would skip any, this might be one, as the resolution is rather faint.
We get Ralph Fiennes, Benedict Cumberbatch, Dev Patel, Ben Kingsley, Richard Ayoade, and Rupert Friend across the stories, with Ralph Fiennes repeating his role as Roald Dahl a few times. All good performances, and it is clear when they swap around roles. Good makeup and costume work!
I do wonder if this could be combined as a stage performance of all these stories in one go. It would be something to check out.
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