Wes Anderson's brand of straight-faced weirdness can be an acquired taste, but the writer-director finds a hospitable outlet for his sense of whimsy in "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar," a 39-minute adaptation of the Roald Dahl story. He also finds the right outfit to bankroll that in awards-hungry Netflix, which surely has visions of Oscar nominations dancing in its head as it kicks off a week of Anderson-directed Dahl shorts.
Anderson previously brought his light touch to Dahl with the animated "Fantastic Mr. Fox" in 2009, and "Henry Sugar" will be followed over successive days by three shorter shorts: "The Swan," "The Rat Catcher" and "Poison," featuring what amounts to a repertory company of players, running 17 minutes each.
Like "Asteroid City," Anderson's latest too-cute movie that premiered this summer before landing on Peacock, and "The French Dispatch" before that, the director's reputation remains a magnet for big-name talent, with Benedict Cumberbatch as the title character and Ralph Fiennes, Ben Kingsley and Dev Patel fleshing out the cast.
Rather than acting and interacting, in "Henry Sugar" those characters essentially take turns reading portions of Dahl's story, amid shifting pastel backdrops that illustrate the tale, creating the effect of listening to a podcast while flipping through a lovely picture book.
The vaguely hypnotic aspect of that well serves a story without much (or really, any) meat to it, telling how Henry Sugar mastered the art of seeing without his eyes, initially intent on using that to cheat at gambling. Yet the skill, and the winnings at the local casino that go with it, yield a sort of spiritual epiphany.
"Henry Sugar" is considered slightly more adult in tone than some of Dahl's best-known stories -- "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "Matilda" (which Netflix recently featured in musical form) among them -- and has the misfortune to follow the debate over censoring some of his works, and the apology issued by his estate in 2020 for antisemitic comments the author made during his lifetime.
Ultimately, the mix of marquee names, relatively bite-sized format and Netflix as a platform feels like an ideal marriage of talent, material and distribution -- a better combination, frankly, than Anderson's last few movies. Then again, when it comes to prestige directors, fans have a way of seeing with their hearts more than their eyes.
"The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar" premieres September 27 on Netflix. "The Swan," "The Rat Catcher" and "Poison" will premiere September 28-30.
