The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More

CinemaSerf

Sometimes it's really easy to think on Roald Dahl as a children's storyteller - without always remembering that a lot of his stories had some really quite dark undertones. Here, the almost as imaginative Wes Anderson takes four of his shorter stories and works them into this loose compendium of features that takes Dahl's themes and immerses them in his vivid and artistically colourful world of surrealism. Each of these threads is presented by way of a witty and quirkily delivered monologue all under the supervision of a series of personifications attributable to the author himself (Ralph Fiennes) and mixing up the styles of production and even animation to take us into the worlds of the benevolently rich, or perhaps just a make-up artiste, "Henry" (Benedict Cumberbatch) and the sagely guru-cum-croupier (Sir Ben Kingsley). Dev Patel and the surprisingly effective Rupert Friend also feature entertainingy as the stories shine lights on humanity - warts and all; on cruelty and on opportunity, but without ramming any philosophy or dogma down our throats. These are fun stories, generously adapted, but it's up to us to glean what we can from the sub-texts of ideas from one author whom this film-maker seems to "get". The one aspect of Anderson's films that I always struggle with is the usually fairly two-dimensional nature of his presentation, but by mixing up his styles here and by allowing the films to almost brew across their ninety minutes, what we end up with is something really quite thought-provokingly entertaining, mysterious and busy. I suspect like many, my favourite sequence is "The Swan" - which I felt had a much more turbulent storyline than the name might conjure up, but the others add to the richness and variety of these interpretations of what could really only be described as a whimsical imagination. One thing I ought to mention. Don't expect starts, middles and ends from this potpourri. They certainly have the former two, but conclusions can be frustratingly thin on the ground. Or, perhaps, they just provide us with some scaffolding to build our own conclusion instead. There's a lot on offer here, so a cinema screening does it most justice, if you can.