Wes Anderson has an uncanny ability to hook us in to his whimsical stories, and then they sometimes come up short with whimsy slowly overwhelming everything. This isn't always true of Anderson's formal, symmetrical plots and strategic camera placements - only "Asteroid City" and "The Darjeeling Limited" are tedious exercises ("The French Dispatch" is 2/3 wonderful and then 1/3 of flagging interest). Anderson has now crafted something that feels akin to his whimsical, cartoonish look at the world and it is Roald Dahl's short story, "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar." Wes Anderson has adapted one of the author's works before ("The Fantastic Mr. Fox," unseen by me) but this one is light on its feet and has a hilarious, breakneck and consistently buoyant tone. It is precious and mercifully short.
The story begins with Roald Dahl himself (Ralph Fiennes) telling the story from his book about the wealthy Henry Sugar (Benedict Cumberbatch, who has a tremendous voice that can rattle your cage) who spots an unusual book in his friend's library. The thin book is written by Dr Chatterjee (Dev Patel) and it is his patient who can see without his eyes. Say what? That man is Imdad Khan (Ben Kingsley) who proves to his doctors his magical ability by having his face completely bandaged and walking through hospital corridors and riding a bike with ease. How is that possible? Khan claims it is a part of the body he has trained for years to manage such an unfounded ability, but what part? We never find out.
Most of "Henry Sugar" is wonderfully adroit and seamlessly edited - it is a near-perfect little film. My objections are the sliding of sets revealing one different setting after another (something which I also found annoying in "Asteroid City"). I was also a bit miffed to watch the actors breaking the fourth wall and read the full Dahl text by including the descriptive prose. Not everything has to be word for word, but then again it is marvelous to watch a film based on a book using such deliciously pronounced words.
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